imERAjL  Gjlus 


Mf/F/^ALO. 


U^U'i^eriU^  yo^  ^^i^^^-ncay 


C^i^/e^a^'/y'^'  '^a/t/or/iio' 


LQ 

o 


.:5 
J- 
<D 


:3 


'O 

© 

u 

'd 

0 

0 

> 

4^ 

[ 

fH 

13 

»_, 

<r 

nH 

C 

0 

C 

^ 

• 

c 

>» 

p. 

> 

0 

!U 

"KD 

\^ 

^f-| 

ci5 

rH 

rH 

3 

0 

00 

^ 

'S 

•fH 

rH 

^ 

to 

Nit) 

fS 

re 

CO 

0. 

c 

CD 

X 

CJ 

^ 

>.•/, 

;3 

to 

X^ 

^ 

•0 

0 

•  • 

rH 

0 

^ 

^C3 

r 

c 

>> 

1— -• 

•rH 

JL. 

CO 

c:J 

3 

43 

■i 

"^2 

•H 

'd 

4^ 

Cm*:: 

<: 

r;^ 

c 

r^. 

rS.., 

CO 

735 

KH 

CO 

4-^ 

•  ••< 

fH 

JD 

d 

r3 

^A-;, 

4-5 

3 
rH 
0 

0 

4-> 

CO 

,J 

^v«. 

^ 

0 

^>. 

• 

4-> 

C 

<D 

^ 

'C 

0 

^* 

rH 

to 

0 

CO 

4-> 

0 

'^j 

::J 

0 

CO 

•H 

t^ 

JL, 

3 

^ 

0^ 

c 

4J 

>. 

t-H 

c 

c 

H 

mH 

.:5 

C 

43 

(D 

>» 

,0 

1 

d 

f_ 

ctf 

•^ 

c:5 

IS: 

tH 

C 

-^> 

4J 

to 

rCl 

''C 

II. 

»-? 

0 

c 

CO 

«k-i 

c 

0 

<D 

C 

0^ 

0 

•H 

i-i 

•iH 

H 

tH 

«rH 

rH 

0 

r 

""C 

'^c' 

r 

^d 

0 

•rH 

^ 

•fH 

0 

S-. 

•» 

<u 

r* 

• 

0 

Tj 

C 

r3 

(D 

to 

E 

'd 

^. 

^ 

^ 

t2 

e 

C 

:3 

<1 

Q> 

0 

0 

JU 

:3 

0 

r^ 

X^ 

Ci-l 

r-d 

::5 

0 

rH 

03 

0 

.c 

P. 

0 

t^ 

«M 

0 

c;J 

> 

0 

OJ 

0 

>i 

> 

<D 

•H 

5- 

u 

0 

rH 

S 

CO 

CO 

rH 

liO 

p. 

c 

-d 

nJ 

:d 

fH 

t;0 

0 

0 

c 

<r 

^ 

C 

c 

c 

fH 

i-i 

•» 

<D 

en 

H 

0 

.Cl 

0 

M 

J^ 

^ 

s 

4^ 

4-5 

X 

1 

<D 

x: 

CO 

4J 

•  • 

> 

4-> 

U 

c 

J^ 

0 

0 

rO 

tH 

0 

•»-« 

C 

<i> 

3 

4J 

to 

^ 

-d 

rH 

c 

<D 

4> 

0 

0 

"■c 

ri 

u 

^ 

J^ 

a 

r3 

d 

:i 

u: 

c 

0 

T: 

Cf-. 

« 

U 

n 

> 

f-| 

•fH 

•0 

d 

•r-k 

•H 

4^ 

C 

0 

P. 

JU 

iH 

c 

^ 

>> 

<D 

D 

0 

>* 

c 

0 

s 

M 

'U 

73 

:Q 

^ 

G 

i 

I 

I 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/addressesdeliverOOIiberich 


The  Liberal  Club,  Buffalo. 

h 

[ORGANIZED,  OCTOBER  29,  1891.] 


ADDRESSES  DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  CLUB 

DURING  THE  THREE  SEASONS. 

1900-1903 


IN    THOUGHT,    FREE; 

IN   TEMPER:  REVERENT  ; 

IN   METHOD,   SCIENTIFIC. 


1904. 


L^ 


HAUSAUER,  SON  &  JONES, 
PRINTERS.  BUFFALO.  N.  Y. 


HfcNRY  r  JENS 


Zhc  Xibecal  Club. 


RULES. 

Adopted  October  2Q,  l8gi. 

First. — This  Club  shall  be  known  as  The  Liberal  Club. 
Its  object  shall  be  the  careful  consideration  at  monthly 
dinners  of  subjects  having  to  do  with  religion,  morals, 
education  and  public  affairs.  Its  discussions  shall  be  in 
thought,  free;   in  temper,  reverent;   in  method,  scientific. 

Second. — The  officers  of  the  Club  shall  be  a  president, 
two  vice-presidents,  a  secretary,  a  treasurer,  a  topic  com- 
mittee, a  membership  committee,  and  an  executive  or 
dinner  committee.  The  president  and  vice-presidents  shall 
be  ex  officio  members  of  all  committees,  and  the  secretary 
and  treasurer  shall  be  ex  officio  members  of  the  executive 
committee.  Each  committee  shall  have  power  to  fill  vacan- 
cies occurring  in  its  number,  and  other  vacancies  may  be 
filled  by  the  president. 

Third. — The  Club  shall  hold  dinners  in  the  months  of 
November,  December,  January,  February  and  March. 
Any  member  may  bring  one  guest  from  out  of  town  to  any 
dinner  on  payment  of  two  dollars. 

Fourth. — The  Club  shall  hold  an  annual  meeting  in 
May,  at  which  officers  shall  be  elected  for  the  ensuing  year. 
At  least  one  week  before  the  annual  meeting  the  president 
shall  appoint  a  nominating  committee  of  five,  which  shall 
make  nominations  for  all  offices. 

Fifth. — The  dues  shall   be  twelve  dollars  per  annum. 


4  *  *     Yh^^ Liberal  club 

and  shall  date  from  the  annual  meeting.  Any  member 
whose  dues  shall  remain  unpaid  for  more  than  one  month 
after  notice  has  been  sent  him  shall  lapse  from  membership 
in  the  Club. 

Sixth. — ^The  membership  of  the  Club  shall  be  limited 
to  three  hundred.  Application  for  membership  shall  be 
considered  by  the  membership  committee,  and  one  adverse 
vote  shall  be  sufficient  to  exclude  any  candidate. 

Seventh. — These  rules  may  be  amended  at  any  annual 
meeting  of  the  Club  by  a  two-thirds  vote  of  all  members,  or 
at  any  time  by  a  two-thirds  vote  of  all  the  officers  of  the  Club. 

Eighth. — (Adopted  November  19,  1896). — All  persons 
applying  for  membership  in  the  Club  shall  sign  an  applica- 
tion card,  which  must  be  endorsed  by  two  members  of  the 
Club  not  members  of  the  membership  committee.  Each 
endorser  must  also  write  a  letter  of  recommendation  of  the 
person  endorsed,  which  shall  accompany  the  card  of  applica- 
tion. 


OFFICERS 


OFFICERS   AND   COMMITTEES   OF 
THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

190J-1904. 


president: 
Robert  R.  Hefford. 

It)  i  c  e  ■  f>  r  a  e  i  b  e  n  t  s : 
Henry  P.  Emerson,  T.  Guilford  Smith. 

Secretatie: 
F.  Howard  Mason. 

Ureaeurer: 
George  C.  Bingham. 

Uopic   Committee: 
Loran  L.  Lewis,  Jr.,  Chairman. 
Walter  L.  Brown,  Martin  Carey, 

Luther  P.  Graves,  Arthur  W.  Hurd. 

Aembevfbip    Committee: 
George  A.  Ricker,  Chairman^ 
Arthur  E.  Hedstrom,  Henry  G.  Grant, 

George  B.  Montgomery,  Knowlton  Mixer. 

}Exec«tive   Committee: 

John  Lord  O'Brian,  Chairman, 

Robert  K.  Root,  C.  R.  Shuttleworth. 


THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

OFFICERS 
1891-1904. 


l^re0t^«nt6: 

E.  Carleton  Sprague, 1891— 1895 

John  G.  MiLBURN,    1895— 1898 

C.W.  Goodyear, 1898— 1899 

John  B.  Olmsted, 1899— 1901 

Henry  W.  Sprague, 1901— 1903 

Robert  R.  Hefford, 1903— 1904 

Vicesf>cesibent0: 

Thomas  R.  Slicer, 1891— 1892 

T.  Guilford  Smith, 1891— 1893 

JuDSON  B.  Andrews, 1892 — 1893 

Dexter  P.  Rumsey, 1893— 1895 

John  G.  Milburn, 1893— 1895 

Ansley  Wilcox, 1895— 1896 

William  H.  Gratwick, 1895 — 1896 

Herbert  G.  Lord, 1896 — 1897 

RoswELL  Park, 1896 — 1897 

C.  W.  Goodyear, 1897— 1898 

S.M.Clement, 1897— 1898 

Wilson  S.  BissELL, 1898 — 1899 

Charles  G.  Stockton, 1898 — 1900 

T.  Guilford  Smith, 1899 — 1900 

Adelbert  Moot, 1900 — 1901 

Rev.  Samuel  V.V.  Holmes, 1900 — 1901 


OFFICERS  7 

R.  R.  Hefford,         1901— 1903 

T.  Guilford  Smith, 1903 — 1904 

Henry  P.  Emerson, 1903 — 1904 

Secretaries: 

Paul  C.  Ransom, ;     •     '  '^Qi— 1^93 

W.  H.  Gratwick,  Jr.,    ....*...  1893— 1895 

Charles  L.  Parke, 1895— 1896 

William  Burnet  Wright,  Jr.,      ....  1896 — 1900 

F.  Howard  Mason, 1900 — 1904 

Ureaeurers: 

John  R.  Williams, 1891— 1901 

G.  Barrett  Rich,  Jr., 1901— 1903 

George  C.  Bingham, 1903 — 1904 

dbafrmen    of   Uopic   Committees: 

De  Lancey  Rochester, 1891 — 1892 

Thomas  R.  Slicer,         1892 — 1898 

Irving  Browne, 1898 

Ansley  Wilcox, 1899 

Herbert  G.  Lord, 1899 — 1901 

Frank  A.  Severance, 1901 — 1903 

Loren  L.  Lewis,  Jr., 1903 — 1904 

(Ebairmen    of   flJembcrsbip    Committees: 

Henry  A.  Richmond, 1891 — 1895 

William  H.  Glenny, 1895 — 1897 

Edmund  Hayes, 1897 — 1898 

Henry  W.Sprague, 1898 — 1900 

George  A.  RiCKER, 1900 — 1901 


8  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Walter  P.  Cooke 1901 — 1902 

Arthur  Detmers, 1902 — 1903 

George  A.  RicKER, 1903 — 1904 

Cbafrmcn   of   Siecutive   Committees: 

Francis  Almy, 1891 — 1902 

John  M.  Satterfield, 1902 — 1903 

John  Lord  O'Brian, 1903 — 1904 


MEMBERS 


LIST  OF  MEMBERS 


900-1903. 


Harrison  M.  Angle, 
J.  J.  Albright, 
Francis  Almy, 
Frederick  Almy, 
Charles  M.  Armstrong, 


James  Ash, 
Charles  E.  Austin, 
T.  G.  Avery, 
A.  F.  Aird, 
Edward  G.  Aldrich. 


B 


Charles  H.  Bailey, 
Howard  A.  Baker, 
Howard  H.  Baker, 
Nathaniel  C.  Barnum, 
Lucius  E.  Bartlett, 
Joseph  C.  Batchelor, 
George  W.  Benson, 
Morris  Benson, 
George  C.  Bingham, 
Herbert  P.  Bissell, 
Wilson  S.  Bissell  * 


George  Bleistein, 

Jesse  C.  Bowen, 

Walter  L.  Brown, 

Frank  Brundage, 

Adelbert  G.  Bugbee, 

O.  C.  Bugbee, 

Dr.  Lorenzo  Burrows,  Jr., 

Edward  H.  Butler, 

J.  A.  Butler, 

Rev.  Frederic  C.  Brown, 

Jos.  B.  Betts. 


George  Cary, 
Walter  Cary, 
Willis  O.  Chapin, 
John  Chamberlain, 
R.  M.  Codd, 
Bernard  Cohen, 
W.  H.  Collins, 


Franklin  G.  Cooke, 
Walter  P.  Cooke, 
William  C.  Cornwell, 
G.  W.  Creighton, 
William  H.  Crosby, 
Dr.  J.  N.  Culbertson, 
John  Cunneen, 


10 


Martin  Carey, 

Dr.  C.  R.  Ciitchlow, 


THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

c 


Harris  A.  Covell, 
H.  E.  Crouch. 


F.  W.  Danforth, 
J.  C.  Dann, 
Ganson  Depew, 
Arthur  Detmers, 
Dr.  Alfred  E.  Diehl, 
R.  S.  Donaldson, 


Charles  F.  Dunbar, 
Walter  J.  Dunham, 
Arthur  D.  Dana, 
Adolph  Duschak, 
H.  O.  Duerr. 


Edward  A.  Eisele, 
A.  J.  Elias, 
Dr.  Charles  A.  Ellis, 
H.  L.  Elmendorf, 


B 


Henry  P.  Emerson, 
William  M.  English, 
John  G.  EppendorfF, 
Edwin  T.  Evans. 


George  W.  Farnham, 
W.  C.  Farrington, 
Edward  G.  Felthousen, 
Clarence  M.  Fenton, 
James  Fenton, 
Simon  Fleischmann, 
Frank  S.  Fosdick, 


F.  P.  Franchot, 
Dr.  Carlton  C.  Frederick 
Dr.  Henry  P.  Frost, 
Robert  L.  Fryer, 
Henry  C.  French, 
Howard  A.  Forman. 


Edward  Gaskin, 
Henry  M.  Gerrans, 
S.  Ginsburg, 
Philip  B.  Goetz, 
Charles  W.  Goodyear, 
Frank  H.  Goodyear, 


Dr.  Henry  Y.  Grant, 

Luther  P.  Graves, 

P.  H.  Griffin, 

Benjamin  H.  Grove,  M.  D., 

Elwood  Grissinger. 


MEMBERS 


11 


H 


Alfred  G.  Hauenstein, 

Edmund  Hayes, 

Arthur  E.  Hedstrom, 

R.  R.,  HefFord, 

Dr.  William  R.  Henderson, 

Raphael  Herman, 

William  H.  Hill, 

Dr.  George  A.  Himmelsbach 

Julius  Hofeller, 

Theodore  Hofeller, 

Allan  I.  Holloway, 


Rev.  S.VanVranken  Holmes, 

William  H.  Hotchkiss, 

George  R.  Howard, 

Dr.  Lucien  Howe, 

Dr.  A.  A.  Hubbell, 

Rev.  Charles  F.  Hubbard, 

Dr.  A.  W.  Hurd, 

E.  M.  Husted, 

Edward  B.  Harvey, 

Louis  B.  Hart, 

John  A.  Hall. 


Dr.  Carlton  R.  Jewett, 
Dr.  Charles  S.  Jewett, 
Albert  E.  Jones, 
Dr.  Allen  A.  Jones, 
Bert  L.  Jones, 


S.  H.  Jones, 
Joseph  A.  Jones, 
Dr.  B.  C.  Johnson, 
J.  C.  Joseph, 
William  H.  Joyce. 


Dr.  Vertner  Kenerson, 
E.  F.  Knibloe, 


Dr.  William  C.  Krauss, 
George  P.  Keating. 


Frank  E.  Lahey, 
Andrew  Langdon, 
J.  N.  Earned, 
John  Laughlin  , 
Shumway  H.  Lee, 
William  C.  Letchworth, 


Dr.  F.  Park  Lewis, 
L.  L.  Lewis,  Jr., 
Paul  M.  Lincoln, 
H.  H.  Littell, 
Frank  M.  Loomis, 
Alfred  Lyth. 


Allen  McKnal, 
J.  J.  McWilliams, 
Elbert  B.  Mann, 


M 


Dr.  Matthew  D.  Mann, 
William  L.  Marcy, 
J.  H.  Massey, 


13 


THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 


M 


George  B.  Mathews, 
George  E.  Matthews, 
Joseph  B.  Mayer, 
L.  F.  Messer, 
Dr.  Herbert  Mickle,* 
JohnG.  Milburn, 
George  C.  Miller, 
W.  M.  Mills, 
Fred  K.  Mixer, 
Knowlton  Mixer, 


George  B.  Montgomery, 
H.  E.  Montgomery, 
Adelbert  Moot, 
H.  H.  Moyer, 
Josiah  G.  Munro, 
F.  Howard  Mason, 
Allan  N.  McNabb, 
Geo.  E.  More, 
H.  G.  Meadows. 


J.  C.  Nagel,* 
Horace  A.  Noble, 


N 


William  P.  Northrop, 
Joseph  W.  Noble. 


John  Lord  O'Brian, 
John  B.  Olmsted, 
John  M.  Olmstead, 


A.  Oppenheimer, 
N.  Oppenheimer. 


Charles  W.  Pardee, 
Dr.  Roswell  Park, 
Charles  S.  Parke, 
Dr.  C.  J.  Patterson, 
Thomas  Penney, 
Lauren  W.  Pettebone, 
Henry  J.  Pierce, 
Emile  S.  Pincott, 
James  A.  Pincott, 


George  A.  Plimpton, 
Henry  W.  Pope, 
Melvin  P.  Porter, 
William  D.  Porter, 
Russell  H  Potter, 
Pascal  P.  Pratt, 
W.  G.  Palmer, 
Austin  R.  Preston. 


Thomas  T.  Ramsdell, 
Richard  F.  Rankine, 
John  E.  Ransom, 


William  W.  Reilley, 
Dr.  W.  S.  Renner, 
Edward  R.  Rice, 


MEMBERS 

R 


13 


G.  Barrett  Rich, 
G.  Barrett  Rich,  Jr., 
A.  C.  Richardson, 
Henry  A.  Richmond, 
George  A.  Ricker, 
William  A.  Rix, 
James  A.  Roberts, 
Nathaniel  Rochester, 


William  A.  Rogers, 
Dr.  R.  R.  Ross, 
Robert  K.  Root, 
Dexter  P.  Rumsey, 
Frank  Rumsey, 
Andrew  J.  Rich, 
Frederick  B.  Robins. 


John  M.  Satterfield, 
Henry  L.  Schwartz,* 
John  Sedgwick, 
L.  G.  Sellstedt, 
Frank  H.  Severance, 
Walter  J.  Shepard, 
C.  R.  Shuttleworth, 
Louis  W.  Simpson, 
William  F.  Sikes, 
J.  Fred  Slocum, 
Carlton  M.  Smith, 
Dr.  Lee  H.  Smith, 
Philip  S.  Smith, 
T.  Guilford  Smith, 
Dr.  Irving  M.  Snow, 


C.  A.  Spaulding, 
Carleton  Sprague, 
Henry  Ware  Sprague, 
Maurice  C.  Spratt, 
Dr.  George  S.  Staniland, 
Wm.  C.  Staniland, 
Rev.  B.  H.  StaufFer, 
Dr.  George  R.  Stearns, 
Nathan  Steigerwald, 
Dr.  Charles  G.  Stockton, 
George  M.  Stowe, 
S.  S.  Spencer,  Jr., 
George  P.  Sawyer, 
Edgar  B.  Stevens. 


Oscar  T.  Taylor, 
Albert  G.  Thorn, 
R.  H.  Thompson, 
A.  G.  Trackenberg, 


George  H.  Tryon, 
U.  S.  Thomas, 
Shirley  Grey  Taylor. 


U 


C.  M.  Underbill, 


Daniel  Upton. 


14  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

V 

Dr.  P.  W.  VanPeyma,  Frederick  A.  Vogt. 


Henry  J.  Warren, 
William  Y.  Warren, 
Henry  M.  Watson, 
F.  J.  Weber, 
Henry  Wertimer, 
Charles  B.  Wheeler, 
Lester  Wheeler, 
Pendennis  White, 
William  S.  Wicks, 
Ansley  Wilcox, 
Dr.  Dewitt  G.  Wilcox, 
Grant  B.  Wilkes, 
George  L.  Williams, 


W 


Gibson  T.  Williams, 
John  R.  Williams, 
Robert  H.  Williams, 
Charles  R.  Wilson, 
C.  Townsend  Wilson, 
Waher  T.  Wilson, 
Frederick  K.  Wing, 
Wilham  B.  Wright,  Jr., 
Fred  R.  Wheeler, 
Dr.  Conrad  E.  Wettlaufer, 
Louis  F.  Wing, 
Shelton  Weed, 
Wm.  R.  Waters. 


NON-RESIDENT  MEMBERS. 


Col.  D.  S.  Alexander, 
Rev.  Samuel  Colgate,* 
Frederick  H.  Green, 
Hon.  F.  W.  Kruse, 
Hon.  James  S.  Liddle, 
Albert  B.  Neil, 
Allen  S.  Olmsted, 


Jacob  W.  Olmsted, 
Edward  H.  Pratt, 
J.  E.  Pound,* 
C.  W.  Ricker, 
H.  M.  Swetland, 
Percy  H.  Wilson, 
N.  G.  Holland. 


HONORARY  MEMBERS. 
Rev.  T.  R.  Slicer,  Rev.  H.  G.  Lord. 


*No-w  Deceased. 


ADDRESSES  15 

ADDRESSES 

1900-1903. 


igoo-igoi. 

PAGE 

Count  Tolstoi  and  His  Philosophy  of  Life    .      .         17 
Mr.  Ernest  Crosby,  Rhinebeck,  N.  Y. 

The  White  Man's  Burden :    What  It  Is  and  What 

It  Is  Not 59 

Mr.  Ernest  Temple  Hargrove,  London,  England. 

The  Relations  of  the  Public  Schools  to  Business 

Life  89 

Prof.  Jeremiah  Whipple  Jenks,  Cornell  Uni- 
versity. 

The  Relations  of  the  United  States  to  the  Orient   .   1 17^ 
His  Excellency  Wu  Ting  Fang,  Minister  from 
China  to  United  States. 

The  True  Liberal I3( 

Rev.  Thomas  R.  Slicer,  New^  York  City. 

The  Eugene  Field  I  Knew 158 

Francis  Wilson,  New  York  City. 

igoi-igo2. 

The  Cause  of  the  Boer, 181 

Commandant  W.  D.  Snyman,  South  Africa. 
Stanley  McKeown  Brown,  Toronto,  Can. 

Education  and  Society, 233 

Rev.  Dr.  Emil  G.  Hirsch,  Chicago,  111. 


/ 


16  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

PAGE 

The  Stage  and  the  Actor, 261 

Sir  Henry  Irving,  London,  England. 

The    CiviHzation    of    Russian    and    Modern 

Socialism, 272 

Prof.  Alexander  M.  Chessin,  St.  Louis,  Mo. 

English  Administration  in  India,       ....       301 
Profl  Henry  Morse  Stephens,  Ithaca,  N.  Y. 

The  Ideal  and  Practicable  in  College  Education    340 
Arthur  T.  Hadley,  President  of  Yale  University. 

I  go  2-1  go ^. 

The  Duties  of  the  New  Century,       ....       358 
Rev.  Edward  Everett  Hale,  D.  D.,  Boston  Mass. 

The  Martinique  Disaster, 

Mr.  Angelo  Heilprin,  Philadelphia. 
Address    given    with    Stereopticon  Views. 
Unreported. 

Are  We  Worse  than  Our  Fathers  ?    .      .      .      .       384 
Hon.  Charles  Emory  Smith,  Philadelphia. 

The  Work  of  the  United  States  in  the  West  Indies,  408 
General  Leonard  Wood,  U.  S.  A. 

Our  Contemporary  Ancestors  in  the  Southern 

Mountains,         445 

William   Goodell    Frost,    President   of  Berea 
College. 


fitet  Blnnctt 

iDecembec  20,  tdoo. 

COUNT  TOLSTOI    AND    HIS    PHILOSOPHY  OF 
LIFE. 

MR.    ERNEST   H.    CROSBY. 

I  wonder  what  Tolstoi  would  say  if  he  could  see  us 
discussing  his  philosophy  in  evening  clothes  after  a 
banquet  like  this.  I  wnsh  he  were  here  in  my  place 
to  tell  you.  I  can  imagine  what  the  effect  would  be 
of  having  him  sitting  in  my  chair.  In  fact,  I  do  not 
see  why  you  should  not  have  him.  If  your  enter- 
prising Secretary  can  get  Wu  Ting  Fang — isn't  that 
his  name .? — and  other  people,  from  distant  places, 
I  do  not  see  why  you  should  not  have  Tolstoi  himself. 
But,  I  can  imagine  him  sitting  here  as  I  saw  him  when 
I  visited  him  in  Russia  some  six  years  ago.  You  know 
his  picture  very  well, — a  plain-looking  Russian  peas- 
ant, with  a  loose  kind  of  a  blouse  on,  a  belt  around  his 
waist — you  could  hardly  call  it  a  belt;  it  looked  like  a 
very-much-damaged  trunk-strap,  I  think,  more  than 
anything  else, — as  shabbily  dressed  as  a  man  could 
be  dressed,  only  distinguished  from  the  peasant  in 
the  field  by  his  scrupulous  neatness  and  by  something 
in  his  face,  a  twinkle  in  the  eye,  under  its  shaggy  gray 
eye-brows,  which  showed  that  he  was  a  man  who  had 
done  a  great  deal  of  thinking  in  his  time.     It  would 


18  /.\  ;  l^r  \  *^*  •    ;  ^^^  I^^ERAL.  CLUB. 

be  a  rather  dramatic  thing,  would  it  not,  to  have  him 
here  ? — a  subject  worthy  of  some  of  the  latest  school 
of  French  artists.  And  I  am  inclined  to  think,  in  any- 
thing that  he  had  to  say,  although  a  great  deal  of  it 
you  would  not  agree  with,  that  there  would  not  be  a 
word  that  you  would  not  receive  with  respect  and  I 
am  sure  when  he  sat  down  you  would  all  feel  that 
you  had  listened  to  a  man,  not  only  one  of  the  most 
sincere  men  on  earth  to-day  but  actually  one  of  the 
sanest  men  as  well. 

It  is  quite  fitting  that  Tolstoi  should  be  presented 
in  a  dramatic  way  because  to  my  mind  he  is  one 
of  the  most  dramatic  of  men — the  least  theatrical, 
but  the  most  dramatic.  It  is  the  secret  of  the 
wonderful  power  of  his  novels.  He  is  a  man  whom 
argument  affects  little;  he  is  a  man  who,  I  am 
inclined  to  think,  would  gain  little  from  the  reading 
of  books;  he  is  a  man  who  sees  things  dramatically 
in  figures;  he  is  a  man  who  always  selects  the  practical 
side,  the  side  of  action  rather  than  the  side  of  thought. 
The  very  first  incident  in  his  life  which  we  are  told 
had  the  effect  of  drawing  him  away  a  little  from  the 
conventional  view  of  things,  was  a  dramatic  incident. 
It  is  told  of  him  when  he  was  a  student  only  eighteen 
years  old  at  the  University  of  Kazan,  he  was  invited 
to  a  ball  at  the  house  of  a  nobleman  who  lived  in 
the  country  in  the  vicinity;  it  was  a  frightfully  cold 
winter  night;  Tolstoi  went  out  to  this  ball  in  a  sleigh 
driven  by  one  of  the  peasant  coachmen  that  are  so 
common  in  Russia.     We  must  remember  in  Russia 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       19 

that  there  are  only  two  classes.  The  middle  class  is 
only  beginning  to  exist  there.  There  are  the  rich 
and  the  nobiUty  on  the  one  side,  and  the  peasants 
on  the  other — and  the  servant  class,  the  coachman 
class.  The  other  class  that  we  are  familiar  with  in 
our  cities  are  really  representatives  of  the  peasant 
class.  So  Tolstoi  was  driven  out  to  this  ball  by  a 
peasant  coachman.  He  went  into  the  ball,  passed 
the  night  in  dancing,  and  finally,  forgetting  alto- 
gether the  coachman  in  the  sleigh  that  he  had  left  out- 
side, when  he  came  out,  at  an  early  hour  in  the  morn- 
ing, he  found  his  driver  unconscious,  very  nearly 
frozen  to  death;  it  was  necessary  to  rub  him;  chafe 
his  hands  and  his  feet  for  two  or  three  hours  before 
he  was  brought  again  to  consciousness.  That  dram- 
atic incident  had  a  tremendous  effect  on  Tolstoi's 
mind,  although  he  was  only  eighteen  years  old.  He 
thought,  **Why  is  it?  Here  am  I,  a  fellow  eighteen 
years  old,  who  has  never  been  of  use  to  anybody;  no- 
body knows  whether  I  am  going  to  be  of  any  use  to 
anybody  or  not.  Why  should  I  be  enjoying  all  these 
things  in  this  warm  house,  this  palace  of  this  noble- 
man, feasting  on  the  fat  things  of  the  earth  in  a 
warmly  heated  ball-room,  and  why  should  this  man — 
representative  of  the  great  peasant  class  that  does 
N  all  the  hard  work  of  the  country,  be  shut  outside  in 
the  cold  ?"  It  seemed  to  him  to  be  a  picture  of  the 
state  of  the  society  that  he  lived  in  and  he  was  so 
affected  by  it  that  he  threw  up  his  college  course,  went 
back    to    his    estate,  where  I  visited    him.  Yasnaya 


20  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

Poliana,  south  of  Moscow, — his  father  and  mother  had 
died  and  he  was  the  owner  of  it  himself — and  he  tried 
to  devote  himself  to  the  advantage  and  benefit  of  the 
serfs  who  were  living  then  on  his  estate.  He  tried 
that  two  or  three  years  and  did  not  find  it  very  suc- 
cessful. Those  of  you  who  have  had  any  experience 
in  trying  to  introduce  new  discoveries  in  the  way  of 
machinery  and  the  management  generally  of  agri- 
cultural property,  know  that  it  is  not  an  easy  thing, 
in  this  country,  to  change  the  habits  of  an  agricultural 
population.  Tolstoi  found  it  in  Russia  even  more 
difficult,  and  after  two  or  three  years  he  was  discour- 
aged; he  gave  it  up  as  a  bad  job. 

He  went  back  to  Moscow  and  applied  for  a  com- 
mission in  the  army.  We  find  him  going  down 
to  serve  the  active  service,  first  in  the  Caucasus 
and  then  shortly  after  that,  as  the  captain  of  a 
battery  of  artillery  in  the  great  Crimean  War,  and 
he  actually  served  in  the  defence  of  Sebastopol  until 
the  capitulation  of  that  city;  saw  all  there  was 
to  be  seen  in  one  of  the  greatest  wars  of  the  century. 
We  must  remember  that  when  Tolstoi  condemns 
war  absolutely,  when  he  says  that  it  is  a  piece  of 
barbarity  that  we  have  no  right  to  countenance 
at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  remember  he 
is  not  speaking  like  many  of  us  who  have  had  no 
experience  in  it;  he  is  a  man  who  has  seen  service 
and  who  came  out  of  the  test  honorably,  promoted 
from  a  lieutenant  to  a  captain,  for  his  services  in 
that  way;  and  I  have  been  told  by  very  good   authori- 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       21 

ties  that  as  the  result  of  his  army  experience  he 
describes  better  than  any  other  master  of  fiction 
what  warfare  really  is,  not  only  in  his  great  novel 
"War  and  Peace'*  but  in  his  military  work  called 
"Sebastopol"  which  gave  an  account  of  this  very 
same  war,  which  was  one  of  the  first  things  he  ever 
wrote.  At  the  end  of  the  war  Tolstoi  had  already 
begun  to  write.  His  reputation  began  to  spread 
throughout  Russia  and  he  found  the  career  of  a 
novelist  open  before  him.  So  he  resigned  his  com- 
mission, went  for  the  first  time  to  St.  Petersburg  and 
was  received  at  once  into  the  best  literary  and  fash- 
ionable society  of  that  city. 

He  tells  us  that  for  the  next  few  years  he  passed 
his  life  in  a  great  deal  of  dissipation.  I  often  think 
that  a  great  many  of  the  very  good  men  who  are, 
you  might  say,  freed  from  their  sins  rather  late 
in  life,  take  pleasure  in  picturing  their  sins  as  blacker 
than  they  really  were,  yet  we  know  that  the  life 
of  a  fashionable  man  in  Russia  is  very  far  from 
being  what  it  should  be.  We  know  they  are  tre- 
mendous drinkers,  they  are  tremendous  gamblers. 
Tolstoi  speaks  of  the  large  amount  of  money  he 
lost  in  gambling.  He  also  tells  us  of  the  number 
of  duels  he  fought — a  great  many  things  which 
he  would  to-day  totally  disapprove  of.  Yet  when 
we  read  his  writings  we  were  always  impressed 
by  the  fact  that  there  was  a  serious  substratum  in 
his  character.  He  never  was  satisfied  with  the  life 
he  was  leading;  he  was  always  looking  for  something 


22  THE  LIBERALICLUB. 

as  a  guide  in  life,  always  feeling  the  want  of  a  working 
theory  of  life.  He  tells  us  about  his  visiting  the 
great  European  capitals,  getting  letters  of-  introduc- 
tion to  the  principal  writers,  trying  to  find  out  from 
them  something  about  their  opinions  as  to  what  the 
life  of  man  means,  what  the  hereafter  is  to  be,  what 
the  object  of  his  life  is,  but  he  came  back  without 
any  satisfactory  answer.  It  was  on  that  trip  that 
another  one  of  these  dramatic  pictures  was  presented 
to  him  that  had  a  lasting  influence  upon  his  character. 
He  was  in  Paris  and  he  went  to  see  a  public  execution 
by  the  guillotine.  As  you  know,  in  Paris  those  execu- 
tions are  open,  on  the  public  square.  He  went.  I 
don't  know  why.  I  suppose  as  a  novelist  he  thought 
every  experience  he  could  have  was  a  valuable  one. 
He  went  to  see  the  execution.  It  had  a  remarkable 
effect  upon  him.  He  tells  us  that  as  he  heard  the 
head  and  the  body  drop  separately  into  the  box 
that  was  prepared  for  them  beneath,  that  he  felt  not 
only  in  his  mind,  in  his  heart,  but  through  his  whole 
person  that  that  was  a  wrong  act  and  that  no  theory 
of  government  or  progress  of  civilization  could  possi- 
bly justify  it.  It  was  the  first  idea  that  came  into  his 
mind,  the  non-resistant,  anti-government  ideas  which 
afterwards  became  so  prominent  in  it,  and  you  will 
see  there,  as  in  the  case  of  the  frozen  coachman,  it 
was  not  a  matter  of  reasoning;  it  was  the  picture  that 
was  presented  to  him  that  brought  him  to  that  con- 
viction. He  came  back  from  his  foreign  travels. 
Just  at  that  time  the  serfs  were  freed;  1861,  I  think 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE        23 

it  was.  Tolstoi,  like  a  great  many  other  good  land- 
lords, went  back  to  his  estates  in  the  country  to  try 
to  fit  the  new  freedmen  for  their  freedom.  He  started 
a  village  school  in  his  own  village;  taught  there  as 
principal  himself;  he  started  an  educational  news- 
paper that  was  largely  circulated  among  the  landlords 
of  Russia.  Something  of  those  papers  have  been 
collected  in  three  volumes  and  translated  into  French. 
I  have  them  in  my  library  and  they  are  most  interest- 
ing as  giving  an  example  of  Tolstoi's  ideas  on  educa- 
tion way  back  forty  years  ago.  It  shows  that  many 
of  his  new  ideas  were  really  in  his  mind  at  that  time. 
He  started  out  with  the  principle  in  teaching  the  chil- 
dren in  school  in  his  village  that  no  child  should  be 
V  taught  anything  that  it  did  not  want  to  learn,  and 
carried  that  out  absolutely.  They  would  take  up  a 
lesson  in  the  morning;  if  the  children  did  not  like  that 
lesson  he  would  take  up  some  other  lesson  until  he  got 
a  lesson  that  they  liked.  The  children  were  never 
obliged  to  study  in  the  school.  He  tells  us  that  about 
twice  a  week  some  boy  would  jump  up  and  run  over 
back  and  get  his  cap  and  start  for  home  and  all  the 
other  children  would  follow,  and  beyond  a  few  calm 
words  of  invitation  the  teachers  never  interfered 
in  any  way  whatever.  He  says  that  happened  only 
about  twice  a  week  after  they  had  already  been  in 
school  some  two  hours  and  he  thinks  the  advantage 
he  obtained  from  knowing  that  the  other  five  days 
of  the  week  they  staid  of  their  own  accord,  and  even 
for  those  two  days  they  staid  a  couple  of  hours,  was 


24  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

quite  worth  all  they  lost  even  by  the  absence  of  those 
children  for  a  part  of  two  days.  I  am  not  sure  that 
that  is  altogether  wrong.  I  do  not  suppose  it  could 
be  applied  very  well  in  a  city  as  large  as  Buffalo,  but 
we  have  got  to  take  Tolstoi's  word  about  his  educa- 
tional experiments  because  we  have  no  other  witnesses 
to  call,  and  he  assures  us  that  there  were  never  any 
children  in  any  part  of  the  world  so  well  educated  as 

\the  children  of  his  town  during  the  time  of  his 
experiment,  and  I  am  sure  we  will  have  to  take  that 
point  as  proven.  For  a  year  or  two  he  found  this  edu- 
cational work  sufficient  to  occupy  his  mind,  but  he 
tells  us  that  at  this  time,  when  he  was  about  thirty- 
four  or  thirty-five  years  old,  that  the  great  questions  of 
Hfe  and  death  which  came  up  before  him  and  insisted 
upon  an  answer  fifteen  years  later,  that  they  would 
have  presented  themselves  to  him  then  if  it  had  not 
been  for  the  fact  that  just  at  that  time  he  happened 
to  meet  a  lady  who  became  Madam  Tolstoi.  His 
mind  was  diverted  from  these  deep  questions  of  eter- 
nity to  the  questions  of  this  world,  and  he  fell  in  love, 
he  married  her,  and  in  the  writing  of  his  two  great 
novels  and  in  the  raising  of  a  large  family  of  children 
in  the  country,  he  found  his  mind  so  occupied  for  the 
coming  fifteen  years  that  he  had  very  Httle  time  left 
for  the  questions  which  after\vards  came  up.    Those  of 

>  you  who  are  famiHar  with  the  novel  *^Anna  Karenina" 
will  remember  the  courtship  of  Levin  and  Kittie. 
It  is  an  actual  transcript  of  Tolstoi's  now  life; 
the  whole  story  of  it  was  the  story  of  his  relations 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       25 

with  Madam  Tolstoi.  When  I  went  to  Yasnaya 
PoHana,  after  having  read  that  book  for  the  first 
time,  and  I  actually  met  "Kittie" — Madam  Tolstoi 
— it  was  very  much  as  though  you  should  happen  to 
meet  "Agnes  Copperfield"  or  "Ethel  Newcome" 
or  some  other  favorite  of  yours  that  you  should  never 
imagine  to  have  been  a  being  on  the  surface  of  the 
earth  at  all.  It  was  a  very  curious  and  interesting 
experience   to   make   her   acquaintance. 

The  next  fifteen  years  passed.  As  I  say,  Tolstoi  was 
busily  occupied  in  writing  his  great  novel.  His  family 
was  growing  up  around  him  in  the  country.  They  very 
rarely  went  into  town  at  all.  Now  take  a  look  at 
Tolstoi  at  fifty:  a  man  of  very  high  rank;  a  man  of 
very  large  landed  estates;  a  man  who  had  added  very 
considerably  to  his  wealth  by  the  large  income  that  he 
derived  from  his  books;  a  man  whose  novels  are 
being  translated  into  all  the  civilized  languages  of  the 
world,  and  who  is  recognized  as  one  of  the  two  or 
three  literary  leaders  of  the  world;  a  man  who  is 
very  happily  married,  who  had  a  devoted  wife  who 
assisted  him  in  his  work,  and  a  fine  family  of  children 
growing  up  around  him.  I  am  sure  anyone  would  say 
that  it  would  be  impossible  for  any  man  at  fifty  years 
of  age  to  have  been  more  fortunate  than  Tolstoi  was. 
And  yet  he  tells  us  that  as  he  came  to  be  fifty  years 
\  of  age  he  was  so  dissatisfied  with  his  life  that  he  found 
it  difficult  to  keep  ideas  of  suicide  out  of  his  mind. 
He  tells  us  that  there  was  a  rope  lying  about  the 
house  and  he  hid  it  away  in  the  closet  so  that  he 


26  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

might  not  see  it  and  be  tempted  to  use  it.  He  was  a 
great  sportsman,  very  fond  of  shooting.  He  gave  up 
shooting  altogether,  for  fear  that  some  day,  in  a  fit  of 
the  blues,  he  might  be  tempted  to  blow^  out  his  own 
brains.  Now,  of  course,  that,  we  will  all  admit  and 
agree,  was  a  most  abnormal  and  unhealthy  and  im- 
proper frame  of  mind  for  a  man  to  be  in.  I  certainly 
have  not  a  word  to  say  in  its  favor.  And  yet  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  the  state  of  mind  of  a  man  or  a 
woman  who  reaches  the  age  of  fifty  years  without 
any  working  theory  of  life,  without  any  dea  of  what 
he  is  living  for,  without  any  idea  of  what  he  is  coming 
to,  who  does  not  give  any  attention  to  those  subjects, 
who  loses  himself  in  the  business  or  the  amusement 
of  the  day, — I  am  not  sure  that  the  state  of  mind  of  such 
a  man  or  such  a  woman  is  not  really  more  abnormal  and 
unhealthy  than  Tolstoi's  was.  And  we  must  remember 
that  Tolstoi  did  not  give  way  to  these  temptations. 
He  was  not  a  coward.  Suicide  is  the  act  of  a  coward. 
He  determined  to  grapple  with  these  great  questions 
and  for  the  space  of  five  long  years  he  grappled  with 
them  until,  to  his  own  satisfaction  at  any  rate,  he  suc- 
ceeded in  overcoming  them.  I  do  not  know  whether 
you  have  noticed,  but  in  all  the  great  biographies,  in 
all  the  great  histories,  you  will  find  that  the  men  who 
have  been  fitted  to  become  leaders  of  their  fellow 
men  have  been  for  a  time  led  out  to  be  tempted  in 
the  wilderness;  to  grapple  with  the  great  questions  of 
life  and  death;  to  determine  for  themselves  whether 
they  are  strong  enough  to  answer  them;    that  then 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       27 

they  come  back  and  give  a  message  to  the  world.  It 
seems  to  me  that  Tolstoi  is  one  of  those  men  and  that 
this  great  struggle  of  his  during  the  five  years,  of  which 
I  can  only  give  you  a  very  brief  outline,  shows  that  he 
is  fitted  to  rank  among  those  great  historical  characters. 
The  first  thing  he  did  was  to  apply  himself  to  the 
members  of  his  own  circle  of  society.  He  went  to 
the  religious  people  in  his  own  circle,  and  he  tells  us 
that  there  were  very  few  of  them;  he  tried  to  find  out 
what  their  ideas  were;  he  did  not  care  so  much  about 
their  dogmatic  beliefs,  but  with  that  dramatic  and 
practical  turn  of  mind  of  his  he  wanted  to  find  out 
from  them  what  their  idea  of  a  Christian  life  was,  and 
as  he  came  into  their  answers  it  seemed  to  him  that 
they  were  deceiving  themselves.  They  talked  a 
great  deal  about  love  for  God  and  love  for  their  neigh- 
bor but  he  couldn't  see  that  they  lived  in  their  out- 
ward lives  differently  from  anybody  else,  and  he  got  no 
lasting  satisfaction  there.  Then  he  begun  to  study 
the  scientific  works  of  the  day, — Spencer  and  Huxley, 
and  the  German  philosophers,  and  particularly  the 
new  biological  school,  as  it  was  at  that  time,  the 
scientific  learning  of  the  day.  He  found  it  all  very 
interesting,  but  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  scientific 
people  were  beginning  at  the  very  wrong  end;  that 
they  tried  to  get  hold  of  life  as  far  away  from  them- 
selves as  they  could;  if  they  could  find  it  in  a  germ 
or  microbe  or  protoplasm,  then  they  were  perfectly 
satisfied,  but  the  life  in  their  own  souls  they  knew 
nothing  about,  had  no  advice  to  give  with  reference  to 


28  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

it,  and  he  got  no  satisfaction  at  all.  He  determined 
to  go  out  into  the  country  and  see  what  he  could  learn 
from  the  peasantry.  He  had  always  been  very  fond 
of  the  peasants.  As  a  boy  he  had  been  brought  up 
in  the  country  in  that  strange  patriarchal  life  of  the 
old  Russian  nobihty,  and  he  had  associated  with  the 
peasant  children  as  a  child;  he  had  become  acquainted 
with  them  again  when  he  attempted  to  teach  them 
after  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs.  Now  he  went 
back  to  them  again,  and  it  seemed  to  him  that  they 
had  in  their  lives  some  kind  of  a  practical  answer  to 
the  question  that  he  was  putting.  They  worked 
very  hard  from  morning  to  night;  they  did  all  the 
hard  work  of  the  Russian  Empire;  and  yet  they 
seemed  to  be  more  or  less  contented.  One  thing 
that  struck  him  more  than  anything  else  was  that 
they  were  not  afraid  of  disease  and  death.  In  his 
own  circle  of  society,  even  the  most  religious  people, 
who  talked  about  going  to  heaven  when  they  died,  the 
moment  they  got  a  serious  symptom  of  any  kind 
would  travel  all  over  the  face  of  the  earth  to  postpone 
their  death  and  send  for  all  the  great  doctors  that 
were  within  reach  and  that  could  be  obtained.  To 
his  surprise  the  peasants,  when  death  came,  seemed 
to  think  it  was  a  natural  thing.  There  was  no  re- 
bellion against  it.  That  seemed  to  him  a  very  sig- 
nificant fact.  He  concluded  that  there  was  a  kind  of 
faith  that  the  peasants  had  that  the  people  of  his 
own  class  of  society  did  not  have.  He  made  up  his 
mind  to  try  to  find  out  what  that  faith  was.     He 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       29 

began  to  go  regularly  to  the  little  church,  which  was 
pointed  out  to  me,  near  his  home  in  the  country, — one 
of  those  curious  white  stucco  churches,  with  green 
cupolas, — you  will  find  these  in  pictures  of  Russia. 
He  had  not  been  accustomed  to  attend  church  for 
many,  many  years  before.  He  went  regularly  to  that 
church  for  many  months.  There  was  a  great  deal  of 
the  services  that  he  could  not  approve  of;  there  were 
a  great  many  of  the  professed  beliefs  of  that  church 
that  he  could  not  accept,  but  he  was  so  anxious  to 
find  out  what  the  peasants'  faith  was  that  he  stuck 
to  it  as  long  as  he  could,  and  it  shows  you  the  practical 
character  of  the  man's  mind  that  the  thing  which 
finally  turned  him  away  from  the  church  was  not  any 
difficulty  with  its  dogmas,  but  was  a  practical  mistake, 
as  it  seemed  to  him.  The  war  had  just  broken  out 
between  Russia  and  Turkey.  Tolstoi  went  to  church. 
In  the  first  part  of  the  service  the  priest  would  read 
that  we  ought  to  love  our  enemies  and  do  good  to 
those  that  persecute  us,  and  so  on,  and  then,  at  the 
end  of  the  service,  there  was  a  prayer  offered  by  order 
of  the  Russian  Synod  asking  God  to  help  the  Russian 
armies  to  blow  up  the  Turks  with  bombshells,  or 
words  to  that  effect.  It  seemed  to  Tolstoi  such  a  totally 
inconsistent  thing  that  it  shocked  him.  From  the 
very  day  that  that  prayer  was  said  the  first  time  he 
gave  up  going  to  that  church.  It  seemed  to  him  that 
a  church  which  taught  such  inconsistent  things  must 
have  something  radically  wrong  in  it. 

Now,  what  was  he  he  to  do  ?    He  was  not  baffled  yet. 


30  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

He  began  to  study  the  Gospels  for  himself.  It  is  almost 
pathetic  to  see  the  earnestness  with  which  he  went  into 
that  work.  He  began  to  study  Greek  again  so  that 
he  might  go  into  the  originals.  He  made  a  complete 
commentary  of  the  Gospels  from  one  end  to  the 
other;  an  English  translation  of  some  of  that  has 
been  pubhshed.  I  have  two  volumes.  You  have 
the  Greek  text  on  one  side,  the  translation  in  English 
on  the  other.  Of  course,  it  was  in  Russian,  in  the 
original,  and  then  a  complete  commentary  under- 
neath by  Tolstoi.  Now,  I  must  admit  that  even 
with  the  little  knowledge  of  Greek  that  I  have  I 
could  see  that  it  was  by  no  means  a  learned  com- 
mentary. There  were  some  little  defects  in  Tolstoi's 
method,  but  whenever  he  came  across  a  verse  that  he 
did  not  Hke,  he  left  it  out, — a  very  simple  method.  I 
wonder  commentators  have  not  thought  before  of  ap- 
plying it; — entirely  satisfactory  to  the  commentator, 
at  any  rate.  But  even  when  you  allow  for  such  high- 
handed proceedings  as  that,  it  seems  to  me  that  that 
commentary  of  Tolstoi's  is  one  of  the  best  that  I 
have  ever  looked  at,  and  for  that  very  reason,  that  he 
has  this  dramatic  talent  that  I  have  been  talking  to 
you  about.  When  Tolstoi  reads  the  Gospels  he  thinks 
it  over;  he  sees  how  Jesus  said  this  and  the  Disciples 
said  that  and  the  whole  thing  is  present  before  him 
as  if  it  had  happened  today,  in  the  streets  in  Buffalo 
and  New  York,  for  he  seems  to  get  the  common  sense 
meaning  of  it  in  a  way  that  the  most  learned  men 
have  failed  to  get  it,  and  this  study  of  the  Gospels 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       31 

led  Tolstoi  to  a  study  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
He  began  to  confine  his  attention  to  that.  He  read 
it  over  and  over  again,  and  every  time  those  pas- 
sages, those  familiar  passages  which  speak  of  loving 
our  enemies,  loving  those  who  persecute  us,  loving 
our  neighbor,  loving  God  with  all  our  heart  and 
soul,  loving  everybody,  letting  our  influence  go  out 
upon  them  equally  to  the  good  and  the  bad,  as  the 
sunshine,  upon  the  just  and  upon  the  unjust, — those 
always  seemed  to  go  deeper  into  his  mind,  into  his 
heart,  than  anything  else. 

Gradually  he  began,  as  he  thought,  to  see  what 
the  secret  of  these  Gospels  is;  that  when  Christ 
said  we  must  love  God  with  all  our  heart  and  our 
soul  and  our  neighbor  as  ourselves,  he  eally  meanrt 
what  he  said.  *'Why,"  he  thought,  "I  have  heard 
those  words  read  time  and  again  for  the  last  fifty 
years  but  it  never  entered  my  head  before  that 
anybody  really  meant  them,"  and  he  began  to  make 
the  experiment  in  his  own  mind  of  loving  every- 
body more  than  himself  as  much  as  he  possibly  could, 
and  as  he  gradually  gave  himself  up  to  that  mental 
exercise,  the  whole  thing  began  to  seem  clear  to  him. 
This  love  for  God  and  love  for  neighbor,  taken  as  an 
actual  experience  and  an  exercise  seemed  like  a  new  pair 
of  spectacles  with  which  to  look  out  upon  the  world. 
He  began  to  feel  the  most  curious  sensations  in  him- 
self. He  tells  us  that  as  he  began  really  to  let  his 
soul  go  out  in  love  to  others,  he  began  to  feel  that 
there  was  an  immortal  essence  in  himself  that  was  not 


32  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

going  to  die.  He  had  never  believed  in  the  immor- 
taHty  of  the  soul.  He  tells  us  that  it  is  quite  impos- 
sible, although  so  many  books  have  been  written  on 
the  subject,  to  prove  the  immortahty  of  the  soul  to 
anybody,  but,  he  says,  "if  you  let  your  soul  go  out  in 
love  to  others  you  will  feel  its  immortality,  and  that  is 
the  only  way  to  prove  it."  He  satisfied  himself  of  the 
immortahty  of  the  soul  in  that  way.  Now,  what  was 
Tolstoi  to  do  ?  His  first  impulse  was  what  would 
have  been  the  impulse,  I  expect,  of  any  of  us  under 
the  same  circumstances, — to  undertake  some  great 
charitable  work.  He  rushed  into  Moscow,  where 
there  were  so  many  poor  people;  he  made  up  his  mind 
to  do  what  he  could  to  establish  some  great  charitable 
society  to  collect  the  superfluous  wealth  of  the  rich 
and  to  distribute  it  among  the  poor.  Somehow  or 
other  he  found  it  did  not  work.  He  expected  the 
money  that  he  gave  to  the  poor  people  to  unite  them 
together  in  brotherly  love.  He  found,  instead  of 
that,  that  as  soon  as  he  gave  a  rouble  to  a  man  that  it 
seemed  to  be  like  a  brick  wall  between  them; — no 
unification,  upon  the  basis  of  giving  and  taking,  of 
that  kind.  By  this  time  he  got  more  ideas  in  his 
mind  about  manual  labor — of  which  I  will  speak  a 
little  more  later  on — and  he  had  got  in  the  habit  of 
going  out  into  the  suburbs  of  Moscow  once  or  twice 
a  week  and  sawing  wood  there  for  a  certain  length  of 
time.  One  day  he  was  walking  into  town  between 
two  wood-sawers,  two  peasants  who  had  been  engaged 
in  sawing  wood  with  him.     They  came  across  a  beg- 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       33 

gar, — another  one  of  those  little  dramatic  incidents 
I  have  told  you  about.  Each  of  them  put  his  hand 
in  his  pocket,  took  out  a  small  copper  coin  and  put 
it  into  the  beggar's  hat.  That  set  Tolstoi  thinking. 
He  said,  "Now,  it  looks  there  as  if  we  had  done  the 
same  thing,  but  we  haven't  been  doing  the  same  thing 
at  all."  That  copper  coin  represented  so  much  labor, 
an  hour  or  half  an  hour,  or  whatever  it  was,  on  the 
part  of  this  peasant.  He  was  giving  himself;  he 
was  giving  his  own  work.  Besides  that,  he  is  a  very 
poor  man;  he  needs  every  penny  that  he  can  get; 
he  will  have  to  go  without  some — not  luxury  perhaps, 
some  necessity  to-night  at  supper  because  he  has  given 
that  coin  away;  he  has  not  only  been  giving  himself 
and  his  own  work  but  he  has  been  depriving  himself 
of  something  that  he  would  have  enjoyed.  "Now, 
what  have  I  been  doing .?  In  the  first  place  I  don't 
know  whether  I  have  got  this  coin  or  not;  it  is  such  a 
small  coin  it  is  absolutely  of  no  importance  to  me  one 
way  or  the  other.  Then,  where  did  I  get  it  ?  Why, 
let  me  see.  That  is  a  part  of  the  rent  that  I  got  for 
some  of  my  farms  down  at  Yasnaya  Poliana.  What  I 
have  done  with  that  coin  is,  I  have  taken  it  out  of  the 
pocket  of  a  peasant  in  the  country  and  I  have  put  it 
into  the  hat  of  a  peasant  in  the  city.  That  is  really 
all  that  I  have  had  to  do  with  it,"  And  he  began  to 
see,  according  to  his  own  ideas,  at  any  rate,  that 
charity,  when  it  was  based  upon  the  superfluous 
wealth  that  comes  in  the  way  of  unearned  income, 
is  not  at  all  the  same  thing  as  the  charity  where  a 

3 


34  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

man  gives  the  money  that  he  actually  earns  himself 
and  needs,  and  he  began  to  think  that  this  great  so- 
ciety that  he  was  going  to  found  would  not  give  the 
satisfaction  that  he  expected  it  would,  and  just  about 
that  time  he  was  filled  with  a  feeling  of  revolt  against 
the  kind  of  life  he  had  been  living  all  his  life  long, — 
a  life  in  which  he  had  had  every  kind  of  luxury,  in 
which  everything  had  been  done  for  him  by  others 
and  in  which  he  had  done  practically  nothing  for  any- 
body else  except  writing  very  interesting  and  instruc- 
tive novels  but  always  simply  for  the  benefit  of  the 
class  that  lived  in  the  same  way  that  he  did.  He 
had  been  doing  absolutely  nothing  for  the  great  work- 
ing class  to  which  he  was  indebted  for  so  large  a  part 
of  the  things  that  he  had  been  enjoying.  He  began 
to  be  filled  with  disgust  for  the  fashionable  life  of 
Moscow,  for  the  club  life,  for  the  social  and  the  church 
life  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  and  he  began  from  that  time, 
not  with  any  idea  of  theatrical  effect,  but  because  he 
could  not  help  it,  to  dress  as  the  peasants  dressed;  to 
go  down  into  the  country  and  live  there  as  simply  as 
he  could;  to  get  along  without  the  luxuries  for  which 
he  did  not  feel  that  he  was  giving  a  full  return  to 
society,  and  to  remove  all  those  differences  which 
drew  the  line  between  him  and  the  humble  members 
of  society  in  which  he  lived. 

Now,  in  considering.  Tolstoi's  behavior  I  think  we 
ought  to  take  into  account  the  peculiarity  of  the  Russian 
character.  I  believe  that  from  my  knowledge  of  Rus- 
sians, which  has  not  been  obtained  from  the  Russian 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       35 

language  at  all — I  don't  read  a  word  of  Russian — but 
from  reading  translations  of  Russian  books,  and  from 
those  that  I  have  met,  they  are  the  most  absolutely 
logical  people  that  ever  lived.  You  persuade  a  Russian 
that  autocracy  is  a  bad  thing,  fully  persuade  him,  and 
you  will  probably  find  him  before  night  trying  to  blow^ 

^  up  the  Czar.  You  persuade  him  that  riches  are  a  bad 
thing  and  the  chances  are  you  v^ill  find  him  around 
the  corner  before  very  long  with  his  pockets  inside 

^  out,  giving  away  his  last  penny  to  the  beggars  in  the 
street.  Now,  of  course,  that  is  not  our  way  of  be- 
having. We  sometimes  get  new  ideas  into  our  minds. 
We  are  generally  pretty  cautious  about  them.  We 
think  them  over  for  twenty  or  thirty  or  forty  years 
and  generally  the  ideas  last  longer  than  we  do.  You 
remember  the  story  of  the  Irishman  with  the  parrot. 
He  had  been  told  that  parrots  lived  to  be  two  hun- 

ydred  years  old,  so  he  bought  a  young  parrot,  to  see 

.  whether  it  was  true  or  not.  That  is  often  the  way 
with  us,  with  our  new  ideas,  and  generally  we  do  not 
live  long  enough  to  find  out.  Now,  there  are  ad- 
vantages in  both  of  those  methods.  The  logic  of  the 
Russian  is  a  very  fine  thing  and  the  caution  of  the 
American  and  the  European  is,  also,  a  very  fine  thing 
in  its  way.  I  suppose  perhaps  a  medium  between 
the  two  would  be  the  best  thing  of  all.  But  when  we 
judge  Tolstoi  and  say  that  he  has  gone  too  far,  in  this 
or  that  or  the  other  thing,  we  must  remember  that 
he  has  that  logical  characteristic  of  the  Russians  and 
when  he  has  once  made  up  his  mind  for  himself  that  a 


36  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

certain  course  of  action  is  the  proper  course,  he  goes 
ahead  and  performs  it,  no  matter  what  the  results 
may  be. 

And  now  let  us  take  up  one  or  two  of  these 
peculiarities  of  his  and  see  whether  they  are  really 
so  very  peculiar  after  all.  Take  this  matter  of  man- 
ual labor.  It  looks  very  funny  for  a  man  like  Tolstoi 
to  dress  like  a  peasant  and  go  out  in  the  fields  and 
plough  and  yet  which  is  the  desirable  thing  in  the  civ- 
ilization, is  it  the  production  of  all-round  men,  or 
merely  the  production  of  merchandise  ?  Are  we  not 
making  a  far  greater  mistake,  on  the  other  hand  ? 
Are  we  not  beginning  to  think  that  the  real  measure 
of  civiHzation  is  the  number  of  bicycles,  automobiles, 
■^^  jimcracks  of  all  kinds  that  we  can  turn  out  in  a  given 
period  of  time,  no  matter  what  effect  the  manu- 
facture of  them  may  have  upon  human  beings  ?  I 
do  not  believe  men  were  made  to  spend  ten  hours  a 
day  in  a  factory  making  one  very  small  and  unim- 
portant part  of  some  object  of  use.  I  do  not  believe 
it.  To  come  to  our  own  class  of  society;  I  do  not 
believe  that  men  were  made  to  spend  the  greater 
part  of  their  lives  scribbling  at  desks  in  offices.  I 
do  not  believe  they  were  made  for  any  such  kind  of 
work  as  that.  That  is  to  say,  I  do  not  believe  they 
were  made  to  have  that  as  their  sole  work.  And  I 
think  that  when  Tolstoi  says  that  it  is  ridiculous  to 
think  that  one  part  of  the  human  race  should  have  all 
their  muscles  developed  and  let  their  minds  atrophy 
and  that  another  part  should  have  their  minds  de- 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE        37 

veloped  till  you  have  the  typical  German  professor, 
\vith  nothing  left  except  a  beard  and  eye-glasses,  with 
no  chest,  no  health,  nothing  whatever  but  brains — it 
seems  to  me  that  the  thing  becomes  a  reductio  ad 
absurdum  and  that  the  very  desirable  division  of  labor 
is  really  at  least  run  into  the  ground.  It  seems  to  me 
that  although  Tolstoi  very  likely  does  go  too  far 
in  the  other  way,  that  he  is  teaching  mankind  a  lesson 
that  mankind  really  ought  to  learn;  that  when  we  go 
knocking  golf  balls  about,  playing  tennis,  lifting  up 
iron  weights  and  doing  all  sorts  of  things  very  often 
for  the  purpose  of  supplying  that  exercise  which  a 
healthy  all-round  life  would  supply  of  itself,  that  we 
are  just  proving  to  our  own  satisfaction,  if  we  would 
only  pay  attention  to  our  own  behavior,  that  the  kind 
of  life  which  we  lead  is  not  the  kind  of  life  which  a 
man  ought  to  lead.  I  do  believe  if  we  are  going  to 
have  anything  in  the  nature  of  a  Utopian  life  upon  this 
world  that  every  human  being  will  be  called  upon  to 
develop  his  arms  and  his  legs  and  his  brains,  all  three 
together.  And  I  fail  to  see  anything  pertinent  or 
suggesting  lunacy  in  a  man  like  Count  Tolstoi,  when 
he  tries  as  hard  as  he  can  to  give  an  example,  you  may 
say, — a  very  poor  and  lame  example,  I  admit, — but  an 
example  of  what  he  thinks  the  life  of  a  human  being 
ought  to  be.  I  know  we  are  accustomed  to  think  that 
our  civilization  is  a  kind  of  finaHty.  I  don't  believe 
it  is.  No  kind  of  civilization  ever  was.  I  am  in- 
clined to  think  that  most  of  us,  if  we  should  ask  our- 
selves,   would    think    that    things   are   going  on  as 


38  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

they  are  forever.  Cities  are  going  on  and  getting 
bigger  and  bigger  and  bigger,  we  think;  lunatic 
asylums  are  going  on  and  getting  bigger  and  bigger 
and  bigger,  the  number  of  lunatic  asylums  to  the 
thousand  increasing;  prisons  are  going  on,  getting 
bigger  and  bigger,  electrocution  chairs  are  going  to 
spread  to  all  places  all  over  the  country;  the  number 
of  tramps  is  going  to  get  bigger,  our  millionaires  are 
going  to  get  bigger  and  vft  are  going  to  have  more 
of  them;  our  slums  are  going  to  get  v^orse  and  worse; — 
I  think  that  is  the  idea  the  average  man  has  today.  I 
was  looking,  at  Niagara  Falls,  at  the  immense  mills 
turning  our  forests  into  pulp, — and  a  good  deal  of  it 
was  lying  about  the  streets  of  Niagara  Falls  when  I 
was  there, — that  is  really  our  idea  of  civilization, — 
and  there  is  going  to  be  more  smoke  in  engines  and 
more  rushing  up  and  down  in  trolley  cars  and  up  and 
down  in  elevators  until  the  whole  thing  flies  to  pieces. 
I  don't  believe  it.     It  is  a  mere  episode. 

I  admire  the  energy.  Energy  is  a  magnificent  thing. 
God  forbid  that  it  is  always  going  to  be  devoted  to  the 
ends  that  it  is  now  devoted  to,  and  God  forbid,  and  I 
don't  beheve  it  is  going  to  be  devoted  to  it,  and  if  you 
study  history  you  will  find  that  it  won't.  Now,  take 
this  matter  of  education.  I  remember  some  years 
ago  going  into  the  University  of  El-Azhar  in  Cairo; 
there  were  a  number  of  teachers  sitting  around  the 
floor,  and  students,  cross-legged,  and  they  had  some 
writing  in  their  hands  going  "Wow-wow-wow"  in  this 
way,  and  I  thought  what  a  lot  of  consummate  idiots 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       39 

they  were.  They  had  been  studying  the  Koran 
for  a  number  of  years, — and  it  is  a  book,  from  my 
own  knowledge,  that  is  absolutely  unworthy  of  study, 
and  I  thought  "they'll  never  get  a  step  farther,"  and  I 
thought  "what  idiots  they  are — why  are  you  not  wise 
like  me?'*  Then  I  began  to  think  about  myself. 
I  spent  eight  years  of  my  life  studying  two  dead  lan- 
guages and  when  I  had  finished  I  couldn't  read,  write 
or  speak  either  one  of  them.  You  know  that  is  true. 
That  is  what  our  education  amounts  to.  The  monks 
of  the  middle  ages  have  got  most  of  our  education. 
They  have  got  their  dead  hand  on  it  today  as  much 
as  they  always  had.  I  have  a  boy  of  thirteen;  I 
help  him  a  good  deal  in  his  lessons;  but  the  one  thing 
I  try  to  impress  on  him  most  is  that  most  of  the  stuff 
that  he  is  learning  is  rubbish — and  he  is  rather  in- 
clined to  agree  with  me,  too.  Now,  we  have  got  an 
idea  in  our  heads  that  learning  languages  is  educa- 
tion— a  perfectly  idiotic  idea.  If  you  have  lived  in  a 
city  as  I  have,  Alexandria  in  Egypt — which  is  a  very 
polyglot  city;  everybody  born  there  in  the  Levantine 
or  foreign  society  knows  about  eleven  languages  just 
as  well  as  their  own;  and  they  are  the  most  unedu- 
cated people  you  ever  met  in  your  life.  The  knowl- 
edge of  language  has  nothing  to  do  with  education. 
And  I  include  in  that  the  knowledge  of  your  own 
language.  Take  spelling,  for  instance.  We  gener- 
ally think  a  man  is  uneducated  if  he  does  not  spell 
well.  I  would  like  to  bet  any  man  here  present  that 
it  is  much  more  essential  to  spell  most  English  words 


40  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

wrong  than  it  is  right.  The  school  boy  who  spells 
"dead"  d-e-d  is  a  much  more  sensible  animal  than 
you  or  I  who  spell  it  d-e-a-d.  You  cannot  deny  that. 
Yet  our  children  spend  hours  learning  such  nonsense 
as  that.  Take  grammar.  What  a  purely  artificial 
thing  grammar  is.  The  object  of  grammar  is  to 
convey  your  ideas.  The  man  who  says  *'them 
things"  will  convey  his  idea  just  as  well  as  the  man 
who  says  "these  things."  Perhaps,  in  a  hundred 
years  from  now,  "them  things"  will  be  right  and 
"these  things"  will  be  wrong.  I  do  not  object  to 
learning  grammar,  but  I  object  to  the  thought  that  it 
constitutes  an  essential  element  in  education.  Where 
I  live,  at  Dutchess  County,  I  have  a  superintendent 
on  my  farm  who  cannot  spell  straight,  cannot  talk 
correct  grammar,  but  he  can  do  pretty  much  every- 
thing else  under  the  sun.  lie  can  build  a  house,  he 
can  lay  a  wall,  go  through  an  orchard,  look  at  the 
trees  and  tell  you  how  many  barrels  to  get  for  your 
apples;  he  knows  the  price  of  everything;  he  can  tend 
to  sheep  or  cattle  or  horses  when  they  are  sick;  he 
knows  what  you  ought  to  do  for  them;  he  knows  what 
feed  they  require;  he  knows  when  to  plant  this,  how 
it  grows,  and  when  to  reap  it.  Those  are  things 
worth  knowing.  They  have  something  to  do  with 
nature  and  with  actual  life,  and  I  often  think,  I  some- 
times think,  I  will  tell  him  when  I  see  him  mending 
a  mowing  machine,  ^*My  dear  fellow,  you're  a 
thousand  times  better  educated  than  I  can  ever 
dream  of   being."      I  have  never  said  it,  but  I  be- 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       41 

lieve  I  shall.  But  that  is  the  way  I  feel  towards  that 
man.  I  think  our  ideas  have  got  to  be  overhauled  in 
very  much  the  same  way  that  Tolstoi  thinks  they 
should  be  taught.  He  thinks  that  children  should  be 
taught  to  love  their  neighbors  as  themselves  and  then 
try  to  be  useful  to  their  neighbors.  And  I  think  if 
you  carry  that  out  you  will  see  it  covers  pretty  much 
the  whole  field  of  activity.  Now  take  the  matter  of 
caste.  My  time  is  pretty  near  up,  but  I  want  to  say 
a  few  words  about  that.  Take  the  matter  of  caste, 
rank,  standing  in  the  community,  which  Tolstoi  wants 
to  throw  overboard  in  his  own  case  at  any  rate.  The 
idea  of  any  kind  of  pride  being  based  upon  one  man 
lifting  himself  above  his  fellow  men  is  a  scientifically 
incorrect  idea.  You  cannot  lift  water  above  its  own 
level.  If  I  raise  myself  or  think  or  estimate  myself 
above  my  fellow  men  I  must  push  them  down  just 
to  the  degree  I  raise  myself.  If  I  am  a  constituent 
part  of  the  human  race,  any  idea  of  mine  to  raise 
myself,  estimate  myself  in  value  as  being  superior 
to  them,  is  really  degrading  all  the  rest  of  the  human 
race  if  it  is  raising  me  at  all.  It  is  a  total  misconcep- 
tion of  the  real  human  pride.  This  whole  idea  of 
"superior"  persons  I  believe  a  thoroughly  rotten, 
poisonous  idea  that  we  have  got  to  get  out  of  our 
minds;  not  that  there  are  not  superior  persons,  but 
that  they  are  not  generally  the  people  who  think  they 
are  superior  persons.  There  is  a  pride,  a  pride  of 
democracy,  that  I  think  most  of  us  have  very  little 
idea  of, — the  pride  by  which  a  man  feels  that  he  is  an 


\ 


42  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

elemental  part  not  only  of  the  human  race,  but  of  the 
universe,  that  he  is  a  little  microcosm  of  himself,  that 
he  is  a  brother  not  only  of  the  king  and  the  emperor, 
but  of  the  tramp  and  the  prostitute  and  that  there  is  a 
little  of  everything  in  him  and  that  the  whole  human 
race  belongs  to  him  and  that  he  represents  the  v^hole 
human  race.  That  is  real  pride.  I  believe  there 
w^as  some  such  idea  of  pride  in  the  minds  of  the  men 
who  founded  our  republic  and  I  believe  we  have  got  to 
keep  true  to  that  idea  of  pride  if  we  are  going  to  make 
this  great  democracy  of  ours  a  success  and  that  we 
must  resolutely  resist  the  temptation  to  look  upon 
ourselves  as  superior  people  who  are  to  hand  down 
benefits  to  the  people  who  happen  to  be  beneath  us. 
Things  do  not  grow  from  up  down,  they  grow  from 
down  up.  History  shows  that  again  and  again  and 
again. 

Then  this  matter — there  are  two  or  three  other 
points  I  might  go  into;  I  haven't  got  time — this  matter 
of  wealth.  (Cries  of  '^  Go  on!"  "Goon!").  This 
matter  of  wealth  I  think  is  a  thing  that  has  got  to  be 
left  to  everybody's  individual  conscience,  but  I  think 
it  is  a  very  good  practice  for  any  one  of  us  to  think 
over  our  own  sources  of  wealth,  whatever  they  may 
be;  to  think  how  far  we  are  earning  our  own  living;  to 
^  think  how  far  we  are  living  on  other  people's  earnings; 
we  may  perhaps  be  taking  away  from  them  that  which 
they  ought  to  have.  I  believe  it  is  a  salutary  thing 
to  think  in  that  way;  to  think  with  reference  to  our 
own  earnings,  whether  those  earnings  have  been  re- 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE      43 

ceived  for  any  real  useful  work  to  the  community, 
and  when  I  say  community  I  mean  not  only  to  the 
wealthy,  superior  people  of  our  own  class  but  to  the 
whole  community,  the  community  as  a  whole.  And 
I  think  it  is  a  salutary  thing  for  us  to  think  of  the  vast 
number  of  people  who  raise  our  food  for  us  and  our 
clothing  and  build  our  houses  for  us,  and  I  do  not 
think  we  ought  to  take  it  as  a  matter  of  course  that 
whenever  we  want  anything  it  has  got  to  be  ready 
and  supplied.  We  ought  to  think  about  the  pro- 
cesses by  which  those  things  come  about  and  we 
ought  to  think  whether  it  is  not  our  duty  to  take  a 
part — I  do  not  say  we  are  not  doing  it,  but  I  expect 
a  great  many  of  us  are  not;  I  know  I  am  not; — that 
we  ought  to  take  a  part  in  supplying  those  things 

\  which  are  necessary  for  the  life  of  mankind  in  this 
world.  And  then  that  wealth  question  involves  that 
great  question  of  land,  and  that  alone  we  could  spend 
a  whole  evening  upon.  Tolstoi  thinks  that  either 
God  or  Nature,  which  ever  way  you  please  to  put  it, 
has  supplied  the  human  race  with  a  globe  to  live  on, 
and  he  thinks  for  one- tenth  of  the  human  race  to 

\  charge  the  other  nine-tenths  rent  for  staying  on  that 
globe  is  an  indefensible  proceeding.  I  have  never 
heard  an  argument  raised  on  the  other  side  and  I  do 

V  not  think  anybody  agrees  with  Tolstoi  except  a  few 
cranks  like  myself.     I  think  that  is  a  matter  worth 

V  thinking  about.  I  am  not  here  in  favor  of  any  specific 
reform.  Moses  made  an  attempt  to  try  to  give  every 
citizen  of  Israel  a  stake  in  the  land.     I  think  we  have 


44  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

got  to  do  something  of  the  same  kind  if  we  want  to 
have  our  legislation  as  just  as  the  legislation  of  Moses 
was. 

Then,  to  come  to  the  last  point  of  Tolstoi's, 
this  matter  of  war.  I  feel  pretty  strongly  on  that 
subject,  as  on  a  good  many  others,  as  you  have  seen, 
but  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  there  is  very  much 
room  for  argument  there.  The  idea,  at  the  end  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  that  people  should  suppose 
that  it  can  in  any  way  assist  the  righteous  settlement 
of  a  question  to  have  the  people  who  happen  to  be  on 
the  other  side  try  to  cut  each  other's  throats  and 
blow  each  other  up  with  bombshells!  It  is  just  as 
ridiculous  and  silly  as  those  old  tests  we  used  to  have 
a  hundred  years  ago, — making  people  walk  across 
red-hot  irons,  making  them  go  through  the  fire  or  under 
water,  to  see  whether  they  were  injured  or  not,  for  the 
purpose  of  finding  out  whether  they  were  on  the 
right  or  wrong  side  of  some  controversy.  I  tell  you, 
my  friends,  here  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century  we  ought  to  have  discovered  some  other  way 
of  settling  our  disputes  than  by  fighting  and  taking 
each  other's  lives,  and  I  believe  with  Tolstoi  that  the 
\  right  way  to  stop  war  is  to  stop  making  war, — a 
simple  method  that  I  do  not  suppose  anybody  will 
adopt,  but  it  seems  to  me  the  right  way  and  the  sensible 
one,  and  I  do  not  think  once  in  a  thousand  years  we 
will  have  to  submit  to  any  injustice  if  we  undertai:e  to 
submit  to  that  simple  way  of  putting  an  end  to^war. 

How  does  Tolstoi  himself  carry  out  these  ideas  ?     I 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       45 

admit,  and  I  am  sure  he  would  be  one  of  the  first  to 
admit,  that  he  does  it  very  imperfectly.  In  some 
ways  I  think  he  has  done  it  very  injudiciously.  His 
house  there  at  Yasnaya  Poliana  he  has  stripped  of  every 
kind  of  luxury.  As  I  remember  there  was  not  a  single 
mat  on  the  floor;  the  service  at  the  table  was  much 
simpler  and  plainer  than  I  have  ever  seen  in  many  a 
tenement  house  in  New  York.  To  be  sure,  his  wife 
was  not  in  the  country  when  I  was  there;  she  was  in 
the  city;  one  or  two  of  his  daughters  were  there. 
Madam  Tolstoi,  to  a  considerable  extent,  has  her 
own  way.  You  must  remember  Tolstoi  is  a  non- 
resistant,  and  that  works  very  well  in  the  domestic 
situation.  (Laughter).  Madam  Tolstoi  goes  a 
good  way  with  him,  but  when  she  puts  her  foot  down, 
why  he  immediately  yields.  I  do  not  know  but  it 
would  be  a  very  good  thing  to  introduce  into  this 
country  in  the  matter  of  marriages,  always  to  have 
one  of  the  parties  a  non-resistant.  My  own  impres- 
sion is  that  usually  it  would  be  the  husband,  so  far  as 
my  own  experience  goes  and  as  the  experience  of  the 
Tolstoi  household  goes.  (Laughter).  At  any  rate, 
that  is  the  way  it  works  there.  It  seems  to  me  that 
Tolstoi  lacks  a  little,  strange  to  say,  of  the  exterior 
artistic  sense.  He  certainly  has  it  in  literature; 
nobody  can  question  that.  He  has  become  so  dis- 
gusted with  the  life  of  the  fashionable  class  that  he 
belonged  to  that  he  cannot  bear  to  have  about  him 
any  of  those  refinements  of  life  that  we  are  accustomed 
to  associate  with  agreeable  living.     It  seems  to  me 


\ 


46  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

there  he  has  gone  a  great  deal  too  far.  If  he  could 
have  combined  his  ideas  somewhat  with  those  of 
WilHam  Morris,  for  instance;  if  he  could  have  en- 
deavored to  show  the  village  people  about  him  now 
they  could  make  their  surroundings  artistic,  and  yet 
in  a  cheap  and  simple  way,  it  might  perhaps  have 
been  a  better  thing.  And  yet  I  cannot  be  sorry  that 
to  this  extent  he  is  a  one-sided  man.  You  really 
need  a  one-sided  man  to  be  of  very  much  use  in  this 
world.  It  seems  to  me  that  Tolstoi  is  a  direct  suc- 
cessor of  the  Prophets  of  old — the  men  who,  in  old 
times,  would  go  about  in  sack-cloth  and  ashes  crying 
upon  the  people  to  repent.  It  seems  to  me  that, 
without  any  intention  on  his  part,  that  very  dramatic 
instinct  of  his  has  made  him  a  sort  of  a  representation 
before  men  to  attract  their  attention  to  the  evils  of 
the  civilization  they  live  in.  All  his  books  cannot 
have  the  influence  that  the  knowledge  has  that  there 
is  one  man  there  trying  seriously,  pathetically,  to 
live  what  he  thinks  the  life  of  a  human  being  should 
be;  that  even  where  he  fails  and  even  where  there  is 
an  element  of  sadness  in  admitting  that  he  has  failed, 
it  is  all  the  more  a  picture  to  draw  our  attention  to 
him,  to  make  us  think  what  our  own  position  is.  And 
yet,  though  it  is  a  dramatic  picture  of  that  kind,  I  do 
not  want  to  leave  the  impression  in  your  minds  that  he 
is  in  the  slightest  degree  theatrical.  He  is  a  man 
who  does  not  think  in  the  least  about  what  people 
think  about  him.  I  have  often  contrasted  him  in 
my  mind  with  Victor  Hugo,  whose  ideas  were  very 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       47 

\  much  the  same  at  Tolstoi's.  Read  "Les  Miserables" 
and  you  will  find  in  it  again  and  again  Tolstoi's  ideas, 
in  almost  Tolstoi's  words,  and  yet  Victor  Hugo  had 
that  element  of  the  theatrical  in  him.  Victor  Hugo 
had  all  that  love  for  his  fellow  men  and  especially  for 
the  French  peasant.  You  may  remember  in  that 
great  funeral  that  Hugo  had  in  Paris,  he  left  special 
instructions  in  his  will  that  he  should  be  buried  in  a 
pauper's  coffin,  but  he  had  the  good  sense  to  know 
that  if  he  had  tried  to  dress  like  a  pauper  during  his 
life  that  he  could  not  have  carried  it  out;  there  always 
would  have  been  the  eye  for  the  gallery,  and  he  very 
wisely  postponed  it  until  after  his  death.  Now, 
Tolstoi  is  a  sort  of  a  Hugo  without  that  theatrical 
sense  of  playing  to  the  gallery,  absolutely  devoid  of  it. 
Those  things  that  he  has  done  he  has  done  because  he 
cannot  help  it. 

Now,  in  conclusion,  I  want  to  tell  you  just  one  Httle 
story — it  will  take  me  about  three  minutes  and  then  I 
will  be  done — to  show  how  Tolstoi  carries  out  his  non- 
resistant  ideas  in  his  own  family.  I  spent  a  couple  of 
days  at  his  country  house  in  1894.  There  was  a  very 
interesting  Swiss  governess  there.  Of  course,  she 
was  a  concession  to  Madam  Tolstoi.  I  am  quite 
sure  Tolstoi  does  not  approve  of  governesses.  But 
she  was  there  at  any  rate  for  the  benefit  of  the  younger 
children,  and  I  had  some  very  interesting  talks  with 
her,  because  of  course  I  could  ask  her  questions  where 
I  could  not  very  well  question  members  of  the  family 
— and  she  told  me  this  story:  Just  two  or  three  days 


48  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

before  I  arrived  there  his  Httle  daughter,  who  was 
then  ten  years  old,  had  been  out  playing  in  front 
of  the  house  with  a  village  boy  from  the  neighboring 
village;  they  got  to  quarreling  about  something  or 
other;  the  boy  had  taken  up  a  stick  and  given  her  a 
hard  hit  on  the  arm  with  it,  so  that  her  arm  was  quite 
black-and-blue.  The  little  girl  ran  into  the  house 
crying.  Evidently  she  had  not  read  any  of  her  father's 
books,  because  she  rushed  up  to  him  and  she  said, 
"  Papa,  this  naughty  boy  has  hit  me  on  the  arm.  Do 
come  out  and  give  him  a  whipping!"  The  govern- 
ess, hearing  what  was  going  on  listened  to  see  how 
Tolstoi  would  take  this  very  natural  demand.  He 
took  the  little  girl  on  his  lap.  "Why,"  he  said,  "my 
dear,  what  good  would  it  do  if  I  went  and  whipped 
that  boy }  Your  arm  would  hurt  you  just  as  much." 
**Yes,"  "yes," — and  she,  as  a  little  girl  would,  went 
on  crying.  "He's  a  naughty  boy  and  you  ought  to 
whip  him."  ^'Why,"  he  said,  "my  dear,  what  did 
that  boy  hit  you  for  ?  He  hit  you  because  he  was 
angry  at  you.  That  means  that  for  a  few  moments 
there  he  hated  you.  Now,  don't  you  think  that  we 
ought  to  try  to  make  him  stop  hating  ^.  If  I  go  out 
there  and  give  him  a  whipping  he'll  not  only  hate  you 
but  he'll  hate  me  too  and  he  may  get  into  such  a 
habit  of  hating  that  he  may  go  on  hating  all  the  rest 
of  his  life.  Now  don't  you  think  it  will  be  a  very 
much  better  thing  if  we  can  do  something  which  will 
make  him  love  us  instead  of  hate  us  ?  Perhaps  it  will 
change  that  boy's  character  all  the  rest  of  his  life." 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       49 

By  that  time  the  Httle  girl's  arm  did  not  hurt  her  very 
much  and  she  began  to  be  rather  amused;  she  won- 
dered what  her  father  was  going  to  say;  she  was  very 
fond  of  her  father  and  wanted  to  please  him.  Well, 
he  soothed  her  a  little  longer.  He  said,  "Now  I'll 
tell  you  what  I'd  do  if  I  were  you.  That  raspberry 
jam  in  the  pantry  there  which  we  had  for  tea  last 
night,  if  I  were  you  Vd  go  and  get  a  saucer  and  a 
spoon  and  some  of  that  jam  and  take  it  out  to  that 
small  boy.  I'm  inclined  to  think  he'll  begin  to  love 
us  then  and  I  think  he  would  never  think  of  such  a 
thing  as  hitting  a  Httle  girl  again."  Well,  the  little 
girl  went.  I  do  not  know  what  her  motives  were. 
We  will  have  to  guess  at  it.  The  governess  told  me 
the  story  just  a  couple  of  days  after  she  went  to  the 
country.  She  got  the  jam  in  a  saucer  and  spoon  and 
she  took  it  out  to  the  little  boy.     I  am  very  sorry  that 

«v  all  the  rest  I  know  of  that  story  is  that  the  boy  ate  the 
jam.  I  have  never  heard  what  his  future  history  was. 
He  may  have  committed  all  the  crimes  in  the  dec- 
alogue since  that  time.  And  I  only  tell  the  story 
as  an  example  of  Tolstoi's  method  at  home.  But  I 
have  often  thought  over  that  story.  I  know  people 
have  different  opinions  about  it.  I  told  it  once  to  an 
audience  down  in  New  Jersey  and  an  old  man  got  up 
in  the  back  of  the  house — they  had  a  discussion  after- 
wards— and  said,  "Mr.  Crosby,  I  know  what  that 
boy  would  do,"  and  I  said  "What?"     "Why,"  he 

-.  said,  "he'd  come  up  next  day  and  hit  her  on  the  other 
arm."     (Laughter).     I  have  not  found  out    to    this 


50  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

day  whether  that  old  gentleman  was  in  earnest  or 
not,  but  I  am  quite  sure  he  was  mistaken.  It  seems 
to  me  that  Tolstoi's  argument  there  is  prefectly 
sound.  It  is  likely  it  would  be  impossible  to  turn 
that  boy  into  a  good  boy;  I  am  not  sure;  but  I  believe 
Tolstoi's  way  of  going  at  him  was  the  only  possible 
way  of  really  making  a  good  boy  out  of  him.  You 
can  imagine  that  boy,  after  he  got  the  whipping, — 
probably  he  knew  he  deserved  it,  but  he  would  have 
gone  down  cursing  and  swearing  to  himself  at  the 
whole  Tolstoi  family.  I  believe  he  would  have  got 
more  or  less  of  a  habit  of  hating  people.  Then  if  you 
try  to  imagine  his  feelings  on  the  other  hand,  when  the 
door  opened  and  this  little  girl  came  out  with  the  rasp- 
berry jam,  his  resistance  of  his  rising  feelings  of  re- 
sentment, then  when  you  think  what  a  rare  thing 
perhaps  it  was  to  a  little  peasant  boy,  how  he  could 
not  resist  the  temptation,  and  in  what  a  shame-faced 
way  he  must  have  come  forward  and  gulped  it  down, 
and  how  he  must  have  gone  down  to  his  house  con- 
vinced that  those  people  up  there  on  the  hill  were  a 
great  deal  better  than  he  was  and  if  he  was  ever  going 
to  be  a  good  man  he  must  behave  a  little  more  in  the 
way  that  they  did,  it  seems  to  me  that  Tolstoi 
there  did  right,  and  it  opens  up  a  very  broad  ques- 
tion of  ethics  and  penology  which  I  will  leave  with 
you. 

After  remarks  by  Mr.  Taylor,  Mr.  Elmendorf,  Mr. 
Larned,  Mr.  O'Brian,  Mr.  Detmers,  Rabbi  Aaron 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       51 

and  Mr.  Monroe,  the  discussion  was  concluded  by 
Mr.  Crosby  as  follows : 

I  think  almost  all  the  points  that  have  been  made 
by  gentlemen  this  evening  are  more  or  less  well  taken. 
I  am  very  far  from  regarding  Tolstoi  as  perfect  and 
I  know  perfectly  well  that  he  is  very  far  from 
regarding  himself  as  such.  My  own  view  of  what 
Tolstoi  has  done  is  this:  he  has  taken  that  part  of  the 
Bible  which  appealed  to  his  deepest  self — and  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  that  is  the  only  part  of  the 
Bible  or  any  other  book  that  any  of  us  have  any  busi- 
ness to  take — he  has  taken  the  part  which  appealed 
to  his  deepest  self  and  that  was  the  part  which  Christ 
said  was  the  summing-up  of  the  law  and  the  prophets. 
So,  certainly  Tolstoi  does  not  think  that  that  is  an  in- 
vention of  Christ's;  he  knows  that  it  comes  from  the 
law  and  the  prophets  that  you  should  love  God  with 
all  your  heart  and  your  soul  and  your  strength,  and 
your  neighbor  as  yourself.  When  Tolstoi  began  to 
take  that  thought  seriously  it  seemed  to  open  a  new 
world  to  him,  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  anyman, 
woman  or  child  who,  for  the  first  time,  takes  that 
thought  seriously,  will  find  that  it  will  have  very  much 
the  same  kind  of  influence  upon  him,  simply  because 
it  is  the  truth,  not  because  anybody  in  particular 
said  it;  and  the  effect  that  it  has  had  upon  Tolstoi  I 
have  already  dwelt  on  to  a  certain  degree.  It  has  had 
the  effect  of  convincing  him  of  the  immortality  of  his 
own  soul,  but  it  has  had  the  still  further  effect,  as  is 
shown    very    beautifully   in   a  book    that    has    just 


52  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

been  published  by  the  Crowells,  called  "Miscellan- 
ies," I  think,  "of  Tolstoi."  There  is  one  section  of 
that,  of  twenty  or  thirty  pages,  which  considers  his 
thoughts  upon  God.  Tolstoi  used  to  be  a  complete 
agnostic;  he  did  not  believe  in  the  existence  of  God  at 
all;  and  yet,  as  you  read  those  twenty  or  thirty 
pages,  you  begin  to  feel  that  he  is  what  they  used  to 
call  a  god-intoxicated  man;  as  much  so  as  the 
Psalmist.  Some  of  his  writings  in  those  Miscellanies 
are  more  like  the  Psalms  than  anything  I  have  read 
since.  They  have  convinced  Tolstoi  of  the  existence 
of  a  God  who  is  in  touch  with  his  own  soul  and  who  is 
providentially  arranging  the  affairs  of  this  world,  and 
the  pessimism  which  Tolstoi  was  overwhelmed  with 
has  ended  in  the  optimistic  outlook.  The  gentleman 
on  my  right  was  perfectly  correct  in  saying  that  in 
"War  and  Peace"  the  opinions  of  Andre  were  pessi- 
mistic, but  that  book  was  written  long  before  Tolstoi 
had  passed  through  the  crisis  of  his  own  life.  Now, 
the  value  of  Tolstoi  to  civilization  today  seems  to  be 
this:  that  taking,  in  this  intense  sense,  the  desire 
to  let  his  life  go  out  in  love  to  everything  outside  of 
him,  he  has  brought  that  principle  as  a  test  for  the 
institutions  of  the  world  as  they  are,  and  almost  in 
every  instance  he  has  found  that  those  institutions 
fail  lamentably.  Tolstoi  never  advises  the  over- 
throwing of  those  institutions;  he  would  not  lift  his 
hand  to  overthrow  them;  but,  he  says,  "When  I 
think  a  thing  is  wrong  I  can't  do  it.  I  think  war  is 
wrong.     I  can't  serve  in  the  army.     I   think  con- 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       53 

demning  men  to  death  or  prison  is  wrong.  I  can't 
act  as  a  judge.  There  are  other  things  of  that  kind 
that  I  cannot  do.  I  do  not  call  upon  you  to  follow 
my  example  until  you  have  adopted  my  opinion,'* — 
and  that  brings  in  this  whole  quetstion  of  non-resis- 
tance. I  do  not  go  as  far  as  Tolstoi  has  in  that,  yet  I 
believe  at  bottom  he  is  right.  I  believe  that  most  of 
the  ills  of  the  world  are  caused  by  the  use  of  force  by 
sane  men  against  sane  men.  There  certainly  is  a 
point  where  a  man  is  a  lunatic,  where  he  is  in  a  de- 
lerium — as  in  the  case  of  animals  or  a  mad  dog, — 
where  it  seems  foolish  to  deny  that  force  is  a  good 
thing  to  use.  I  am  not  at  all  quite  clear  as  to  whether 
Tolstoi  would  agree  with  me  as  to  that.  But  when 
it  comes  to  the  management  of  sane  people  who  can 
be  reached  by  argument,  I  am  fully  of  Tolstoi's  belief 
that  there  are  more  crime  and  violence  in  the  world 
y  today  because  we  try  to  use  force  to  stop  them  than 
there  would  be  if  we  did  not  try  to  use  it.  But  Tolstoi 
does  not  even  take  that  ground.  He  comes  back 
again.  He  is  the  chief  novelist  of  the  day,  as  I  think, 
someone  has  said  here  this  evening.  He  only  argues 
what  is  right  for  him.  He  says,  "I  want  to  love 
everybody.  I  do,  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  I  do  love 
everybody,  and  when  I  love  a  man  it  is  impossible  for 
me,  I  cannot  bring  myself  up  to  using  violence  against 
him.  It  is  as  impossible  for  me  to  put  a  bayonet  into 
an  enemy  of  my  country  as  it  would  be  for  me  to  skin 
a  baby," — and  I  expect  most  of  us  here  have  got  far 
enough  along  in  civilization  to  refuse  to  skin  a  baby, 


54»  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

even  if  it  were  to  save  five  million  lives.  That  is  the 
way  Tolstoi  feels  about  a  bayonet  charge;  that  is  the 
way  he  feels  about  hanging  a  man;  that  is  the  way  he 
feels  about  using  force  around  him  in  any  shape. 
That  is  a  very  big  question.  He  has  written  volume 
upon  volume  on  the  question.  It  is  impossible  to  go 
into  it  tonight  but  I  confess  at  the  bottom  of  my 
soul  I  have  very  much  that  same  feeling.  If  I  really 
love  a  man  in  all  my  heart  I  cannot  find  it  in  my  heart 
to  use  violence  against  him.  It  seems  to  me  the 
wonderful  thing  about  the  history  of  Jesus  is  that  it 
shows  he  felt  that  way.  There  is  just  that  one  incident 
about  the  money-changers  in  the  temple,  on  the 
other  side,  and  it  seems  to  me  it  has  done  a  great 
deal  more  service  in  the  history  of  biblical  criticism 
than  it  was  calculated  to  do.  If  you  read  the  account 
in  St.  John  it  simply  shows  that  he  used  the  ordinary 
whip  of  the  country  for  the  purpose  of  driving  the 
cattle  out  of  the  temple  and  that  he  upset  a  certain 
number  of  tables.  There  is  absolutely  no  proof 
of  any  kind  and  I  do  not  believe  it  for  a  moment,  that 
Jesus  ever  struck  one  of  the  men  there  with  the  whip 
and  if  he  used  it  even  for  the  cattle,  I  should  say  it 
was  merely  as  a  matter  of  form  and  as  the  ordinary 
way  of  driving.  When  we  come  down  there  to  the 
scene  in  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane  where  Peter 
cuts  off  the  ear  of  the  servant  of  the  high  priest, 
Christ  tells  him  to  put  back  the  sword  into  the  sheath, 
not  on  account  of  the  individual  peculiarities  of  that 
special  occasion,  but  on  the  broad  general  principle 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE       65 

that  they  that  take  the  sword  shall  perish  by  the 
sword.  Peter  was  not  only  acting  in  self-defense,  he 
was  acting  in  the  far  nobler  character  of  a  man  who 
was  defending  his  best  beloved  friend,  and  Christ 
rebukes  him,  laying  down  the  broadest  principle. 
Like  almost  all — like  all,  I  should  say,  of  the  sayings 
of  Christ,  it  is  founded  on  the  deep  philosophical 
truth;  if  you  take  up  the  sword  you  will  perish  by  the 
sword;  that  is,  if  you  exert  violence,  you  are  going  to 
create  violence  in  the  future.  We  have  been  living 
here  on  the  earth  I  don't  know  how  many  thousands 
of  years,  each  of  us  with  his  own  ideas,  each  of  us 
with  his  own  desires  of  what  he  wants  done  and  each 
of  us  determined  in  one  way  or  another  to  force  people 
to  do  what  he  wants.  Tolstoi  says  we  are  taking  the 
wrong  method.  If  you  love  other  people,  you  would 
say  that  you  are  taking  the  wrong  method.  Let 
us  stop  the  violence  which  causes  all  these  evils,  and 
the  best  way  for  you  and  me  to  do  it  is  to  refrain  from 
it  and  the  little  crime  that  will  result  from  it  will  be 
far  less  than  the  crimes  that  are  committed  every  day 
in  the  year.  It  does  seem  to  me  that  that  is  a  lum- 
inous thought.  I  do  not  expect  everybody  to  accept 
it,  but  there  is  something  in  every  man's  heart  that 
responds  to  that.  It  is  a  fact  we  are  far  too  apt  to 
rely  upon  force  and  violence  as  a  means  of  attaining 
our  ends;  that  sometimes  it  might  be  a  good  thing 
for  us  to  forego  the  ends  we  have  set  our  hearts  upon 
if  by  so  doing  we  could  decrease  the  violence  that 
exists  in  the  world    today.     I  believe  that  is  a  mes- 


56  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

sage  that  is  worth  preaching;  I  believe  it  is  a  message 
that  is  worth  preaching  outside  of  the  boundaries 
of  Russia;  I  beHeve  that  the  great  value  of  Tolstoi 
in  preaching  it  has  been  the  fact  that  he  has  done  it 
with  such  sincerity  that  nodody  can  question  his 
intention.  He  may  be  inconsistent  in  some  small 
matters.  They  are  such  small  matters  that  they  are 
hardly  worth  talking  about.  Now,  as  to  this  matter 
of  sanity,  and  I  have  done.     I  do. not  believe  it  is 

N  possible  for  a  man  to  be  ahead  of  the  times  to  any 
degree  without  lacking  a  little  in  sanity.  It  is  im- 
possible. It  is  an  abnormal  position  for  a  man  to  be 
in.  And  yet  those  are  the  men  that  are  necessary 
to  the  world.  We  all  remember  that  Christ's  own 
family  thought  he  was  beside  himself.  That  has  been 
the  criticism  upon  all  men  who  have  been  ahead  of 
their  times.  I  believe  it  to  a  certain  degree  in  the 
case  of  Tolstoi.  It  is  a  just  criticism.  He  does  these 
things  too  much  from  his  own  point  of  view.  He 
criticises  existing  conditions  a  little  too  much  without 
the  sense  of  historical  perspective,  but  I  think  that 
just  for  that  reason  his  usefulness  is  increased;  makes 
us  criticise  the  institutions  of  the  time,  just  as  the 
abolitionists  fifty  years  ago  did  their  noble  work  in 
making  us  criticise  the  institutions  of  those  times. 

^  Every  age  has  had  its  barbarisms,  and  it  is  a  strange 
thing  that  in  every  succeeding  age  people  think  they 
have  got  rid  of  all  the  barbarisms  that  there  are. 
Slavery  was  a  barbarism  fifty  years  ago;  hanging  men 
and  boys  too,  for  stealing  a  shilling,  was  a  barbarism 


COUNT  TOLSTOI  AND  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  OF  LIFE        57 

fifty  years  before  that;  examining  witnesses  by  torture 
was  a  barbarism  fifty  years  before  that;  burning  crim- 
inals at  the  stake  was  a  barbarism,  imprisonment  for 
debt  was  a  barbarism.  But  here  we  are  in  the  year 
1900  and  you  wish  me  to  believe  there  are  no  barbar- 
isms now,  when  the  lesson  of  history  is  that  there  are 
always  barbarisms,  and  you  have  got  to  have  men  like 
Tolstoi  on  ahead  to  show  you  what  they  are, — and  one 
of  them  has  been  referred  to  this  evening  by  Mr. 
Larned,  and  that  is  the  barbarism  of  war,  one  of  the 
most  self-evident  of  all,  and  if  we  apply  this  same  test 
of  Tolstoi,  love, — love  your  enemies, — to  the  question 
of  war,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  whole  thing 
will  melt  away.  I  have  never  been  in  a  position 
where  I  have  had  to  wage  war  on  anybody.  I  do  not 
believe  any  of  you  ever  have  been,  and  I  do  not  be- 
lieve by  reading  the  newspapers  and  hearing  what 
people  are  doing  ten  thousand  miles  away  that  we 
can  find  out,  to  our  advantage,  that  there  is  any  dan- 
ger of  anybody  waging  war  upon  us.  The  things 
that  cause  the  war  are  our  armaments,  the  things 
that  we  are  going  to  build  now  on  this  coast  and  on 
the  Pacific  coast,  the  ships, — are  the  things  that  are 
going  to  bring  about  war,  and  if  we  had  no  navy  or 
army  at  all  I  believe  we  should  have  more  influence 
in  the  world  for  the  next  hundred  years  than  we  are 
going  to  have  with  our  army,  and  with  our  navy,  and 
I  am  perfectly  sure  that  there  is  no  nation  on  the  face 
of  the  earth  that  will  ever  pick  a  quarrel  with  us. 
Those  are  my  sentiments  and  beliefs.     Of  course,  I  do 


58  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

not  expect  many  to  agree  with  me  but  I  do  believe 
that  Tolstoi,  even  if  he  lacks  sanity,  even  if  he  does 
overdo  things  a  little,  is,  by  that  very  thing,  doing  a 
favor  to  the  world,  and  by  giving  a  dramatic  expres- 
sion to  his  criticism  of  institutions  as  they  are,  he  is 
making  us  think  in  a  wayinwhich  we  all  ought  to  think. 


ScconD  Dinner. 

^anuari;  24«  I90t. 

THE  WHITE    MAN'S    BURDEN;    WHAT   IT   IS,   AND 
WHAT   IT    IS    NOT. 

MR.  ERNEST  TEMPLE  HARGROVE. 

I  feel  in  no  way  fitted  to  respond  to  the  open- 
ing remarks  that  have  been  made  by  our  chairman. 
It  would  be  impossible  for  one  in  my  position  to 
say  anything  that  would  be  suitable.  You  have 
said  what  you  have  had  to  say  and  I  think  we 
had  better  leave  it  there.  It  reminds  one,  however, 
of  how  small  the  world  has  become, — that  the 
people  of  this  nation  can  join  with  the  rest  of  the 
English-speaking  world  in  regret  at  the  death  of  a 
great  Queen.  The  world  has  become  small — too 
small  from  one  point  of  view — because,  passing 
from  that  subject  and  turning  to  the  subject  of  this 
evening,  it  seems  almost  impossible  to  say  any- 
thing which  will  not  have  an  apparent  bearing 
upon  the  politics  of  this  country,  and  I  do  not  pose 
as  knowing  anything  whatsoever  about  the  politics 
of  this  country.  Further  than  that,  as  an  English- 
man and  yet  as  a  pro-Boer,  I  have  found  in  this 
country  another  illustration  of  the  smallness  of  our 
world  in  the  fact  that  feeling  runs  high  even  here 
in  regard  to  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  the  war  in  South 
Africa.     It  is,  of  course,  my  object  this  evening  to 


60  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

say  what  I  have  to  say  without  offending  anybody, 
and  as  I  see  that  the  motto  of  your  club  is  "In  thought 
free;  in  temper,  reverent;  in  method,  scientific,"  I 
think  that  I  shall  be  able  to  say  what  I  have  to  say 
without  hurting  anyone's  feelings.  But  at  the  same 
time,  when  one  comes  to  deal  with  a  more  or  less 
serious  subject,  I,  for  one,  feel  some  trepidation, 
because  after  dining  one  gets  into  the  habit  of  think- 
ing that  men  are  not  in  the  mood  for  serious  talk. 
I  can  understand  the  freedom  of  thought  after  dinner; 
I  can  understand  a  certain  amount  of  reverence  after 
dinner;  but  the  scientific  spirit  is  something  to  be 
admired,  something  to  be  reverenced,  when  even  it 
survives  such  an  excellent  dinner  as  we  have  had 
tonight. 

Now,  the  talk  is  to  be  about  the  white  man's  bur- 
den, what  it  is  and  what  it  is  not,  and,  to  be  frank,  I 
have  not  come  with  any  set  speech,  but  it  seemed  to 
me  that  a  certain  fellow  countryman  of  mine,  who,  it 
has  been  suggested,  was  good  enough  to  discover  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race,  when  he  talked  about  the  white 
man's  burden  left  out  a  very  important  part  of  that 
burden,  forgot  to  mention  it.  He  said  that  we  had  a 
burden,  that  it  was  a  burden  of  duty,  and  he  did  not 
mention  what  seems  to  me  to  be  a  very  important 
element  in  that  duty, — the  duty  of  minding  one's 
own  business.  You  will  remember  perhaps  that  in 
Greville's  Memoirs,  under  date,  I  think,  October, 
1856,  he  speaks  of  the  rage  for  interfering  in  the 
internal  affairs  of  other  people  which,  he  said,  seemed 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  61 

to  have  taken  possession  and  to  have  become  a  mania 
of  the  EngHsh  people  of  his  time.  And  if  one  looks 
around  the  world  today,  I  think  some  of  you  perhaps 
will  agree  with  me  that  the  mania  of  which  he  com- 
plained in  '56  has  become  international.  It  is  no 
longer  confined  to  England,  it  has  become  world  wide. 
It  has  been  said  that  we  people  in  England  are  very 
busy  imitating  things  American;  it  has  been  said  that 
we  are  imitating  all  of  your  vices  and  none  of  your 
virtues;  but  it  is  also  possible  that  we  are  responsible 
to  some  extent  for  things  that  have  been  taking  place 
here.  I  do  not  know  to  what  extent,  and  I  do  not 
wish  to  refer  further  to  anything  that  has  taken  place 
here.  My  aim  will  be  to  deal  with  certain  general 
principles  and  with  one  distinct,  clear-cut  proposition 
and  that  is  this:  That  it  does  not  pay  to  interfere 
arbitrarily  in  the  affairs  of  other  peoples;  that  one 
thing  that  we  must  learn  is  to  mind  our  own  business. 
Now,  that  does  not  mean  by  any  means  selfish  isola- 
tion, because  selfish  insolation,  if  persisted  in,  must 
end,  throughout  the  whole  of  nature,  in  stagnation, 
in  death  and  in  dissolution.  Wherever  you  turn  in 
nature,  you  will  find  that  that  is  the  law.  And  if  we 
have  a  burden  of  duty  it  seems  to  me  that  one  ele- 
ment of  that  duty  is  to  act  as  an  example  to  those 
who  are  supposed  to  know  less  than  we  do,  not  to 
catch  them  by  the  throat,  to  shake  them  and  to  say, 
"You  shall  conform  to  what  we  think  to  be  right;" 
not  to  try  and  cram  them  into  a  little  mould  of  our 
own  devising,  but  to  act  according  to  principles  of 


62  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

right,  and  then  to  know,  to  have  enough  faith,  not 
only  in  human  nature  but  in  universal  nature,  to  feel 
confident  that  our  example  w^ill  strike  like  Vulcan 
upon  the  hearts  of  others.  Well,  it  has  been  said, 
further,  that  the  Anglo-Saxon,  the  so-called  Anglo- 
Saxon,  is  always  something  of  a  reformer  and  that  it 
is  in  the  nature  of  a  reformer — that  there  is  at  least 
a  tendency  in  his  nature  to  rush  out  into  external 
work  and  to  leave  perhaps  those  who  are  nearest  and 
dearest  to  him  to  look  more  or  less  after  themselves. 
If  that  be  true  it  is  at  least  regrettable.  It  is  often 
met  with,  I  think,  among  reformers  because  every 
good  quality,  as  we  all  know,  has  its  own  defect; 
every  virtue  has  its  own  defect;  and  the  reform 
spirit — good  in  itself — is  likely  to  run  to  that  ex- 
treme, to  run  outside  of  the  legitimate  sphere  of  work 
and  to  begin  to  reform  the  universe,  and  that  is  just 
when  the  trouble  begins.  Now,  what  is  true  of  indi- 
viduals is  often  true  of  nations,  and  it  seems  to  me, 
speaking  for  myself,  that  in  my  own  country  there 
has  been  a  certain  tendency  towards  looking  upon 
that  country  as  a  civilizing  power  with  a  mission. 
You  will  find  that  a  great  many  Englishmen  are  so 
convinced  that  wherever  the  British  flag  goes  there 
will  go  civilization,  progress  and  education,  that  they 
will  be  perfectly  prepared  to  admit  that  the  United 
States  of  America  would  get  along  splendidly  if  it 
could  be  incorporated  as  a  part  of  the  British  Em- 
pire, and  I  would  even  venture  to  suggest  to  you 
gentlemen,    that    there    are    many    Americans    who 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  63 

would  say  perhaps  that  if  it  were  not  for  the  darned 
conceit  and  cussedness  of  the  average  Englishman 
that  those  small  islands  over  there  would  prosper 
wonderfully  as  States  in  the  Union.  We  all  of  us 
believe  in  our  flag.  It  is  a  very  excellent  belief.  I 
think  we  ought  to.  But  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  this 
belief  is  sometimes  carried  to  an  extreme.  If  we  have 
a  mission,  if  we  have  a  civilizing  mission,  I  think,  as  I 
have  said  in  the  first  place,  that  we  may  civilize  by 
example;  but  if  we  look  right  at  home  and  see  the 
condition  in  which  our  own  countries  are,  I  think  we 
will  find  that  there  is  a  large  field  of  labor  right  here 
where  we  live.  In  England  at  least,  if  you  take  up  any 
daily  paper,  you  will  find  statements  such  as  this — I 
remember  one  I  saw  the  other  day:  A  member  of  the 
Sleaford  Board  of  Guardians,  speaking  about  how  the 
poor  live  in  his  district,  spoke  of  an  old  woman  of  76, 
who  had  been  living  on  three  shillings  a  week — which 
of  course,  as  you  know,  is  75  cents — for  eight  years; 
during  that  time  she  had  had  no  new  clothes  whatso- 
ever and  she  had  a  fire  in  her  room  for  only  an  hour  a 
day  in  the  winter,  that  she  had  no  meat,  and  so  on 
and  so  forth.  No  editorial  comment  of  any  kind  was 
made  on  this  fact,  and  you  will  find  such  facts  in  any 
daily  paper  you  choose  to  take  up.  Such  facts  as  that 
are  looked  upon  as  inevitable  details  in  our  civiliza- 
tion, unavoidable,  and  so  there  is  no  editorial  com- 
ment, and  yet  you  will  find  in  the  same  paper,  col- 
umns written  about  our  duty  in  China  to  show  these 
Chinese  how  a  real  Christian  land,  civilized  country, 


64  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

should  behave;  you  will  find  columns  about  our  duty 
in  South  Africa  to  show,  among  other  things,  how 
vastly  we  are  superior  to  the  Boers,  and  not  one  word 
about  facts  which  stand  out  right  in  front  of  us  and 
which  are  so  near  and  so  familiar  that  we  think  per- 
haps it  is  better  to  forget  them,  and  so  we  proceed  to 
forget  them  as  examples  of  our  civilization  by  pro- 
ceeding to  confer  the  blessings  of  our  civilization  upon 
other  people.  And  so  it  goes  on.  Now,  this  is  said 
to  be  not  only  our  manifest  destiny  but  a  highly 
profitable  duty  as  well,  and  I  will  admit,  at  the  begin- 
ning, that  this  policy  of  domineering  interference  in 
the  internal  affairs  of  others  has  temptations.  Ex- 
cuses are  made  for  it — many  excuses.  Now,  of 
course,  I  am  sorry  myself  that  it  does  not  occur  to 
those  people  who  are  so  anxious  to  civilize  others, 
that  these  others  might  help  to  civilize  us,  and  yet  it 
would  be  strange  if  we  had  nothing  to  learn  from 
the  Chinese,  nothing  to  learn  from  the  Hindoos, 
nothing  to  learn  from  the  Boers.  It  would  be  strange. 
And  it  would  be  stranger  still  when  it  is  all  said  and 
done,  if  it  were  possible  to  lay  down  a  standard, — a 
definite,  fixed  standard  of  civilization.  Because,  what 
is  civilization  anyhow  ?  Is  not  a  civilized  environ- 
ment that  environment  which  best  promotes  the 
physical,  the  mental  and  the  moral  welfare  of  the 
individual  ?  What  else  is  civilization  ?  If  we  look  to 
the  history  of  the  past  we  shall  find  in  the  past — in 
Greece,  for  example — civilization  has  been  more 
highly  developed  than  it  now  is  in  some  directions 


N 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  65 

and  if  we  look  around  the  world  of  the  present  day  we 
shall  find  in  some  countries  where,  for  instance,  it  is 
looked  upon  as  a  social  crime  to  refuse  anyone  with- 
out a  shelter,  that  in  those  countries,  in  some  direc- 
tions, civilization  is  perhaps  more  advanced  than  even 
here.  And  so  the  more  we  read,  the  more  we  learn, 
the  more  we  travel,  the  more  we  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion, I  think,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  arbi- 
trary standard  of  civilization;  that  you  cannot  set  up 
a  fixed  mould  and  proceed  to  cram  everyone  into  that 
mould  no  matter  what  his  color,  religion  or  race  may 
be.  You  have  developed  an  extraordinary  civiliza- 
tion in  this  country,  but  will  you  mean  to  say  that  all 
peoples,  wherever  they  may  be,  should  adapt  them- 
selves to  your  ways,  to  your  methods,  should  imitate 
you  ?  Not  long  ago,  in  the  north  of  England — in 
Blackburn,asa  matter  of  fact, — I  was  walking  through 
the  streets  with  a  Boer,  a  Boer  from  South  Africa,  a 
Boer  from  Cape  Colony;  it  was  in  the  evening,  about 
half-past  six,  and  as  we  walked  through  the  streets, 
out  of  all  the  factories  there  streamed  boys  and 
young  girls,  girls  of  i6,  17,  18,  with  shawls  over  their 
heads,  with  wooden  clogs  on  their  feet,  pale-faced, 
anaemic;  and  he  asked  me  where  these  people  had 
been  coming  from,  what  they  had  been  doing,  and  I 
explained  to  him  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  something 
of  the  lives  they  were  living;  they  were  factory  hands. 
His  comment  when  he  heard  of  this  example  of  our 
civilization  was  to  exclaim,  *'My  God!"  He  was  not 
impressed,  he  did  not  tumble  down  and  worship.  He 
5 


66  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

had  been  accustomed  to  live  in  the  open  veldt.  He 
was  not  a  rich  man,  but  he  had  his  horse,  he  could 
hunt  and  shoot,  and  he  lived  under  the  free  air  of 
heaven  and  he  loved  it,  and  he  w^as  by  no  means 
envious  of  what  he  saw  in  this  city  of  ours  called 
Blackburn.  And  so,  when  it  comes  to  the  point,  we 
shall  have  to  stop  and  consider  just  what  we  mean  by 
conferring  the  blessings  of  our  civilization  upon  other 
people.  Now,  there  are  those,  of  course,  who  would 
not  pretent  that  the  colored  man,  let  us  say,  is 
necessarily  improved  by  wearing  high  white  collars 
and  patent  leather  shoes,  but  they  would  urge  that 
wherever  the  flag  goes  there  go  Christianity  and 
the  Bible,  and  therefore  they  will  argue  that  it  is 
worth  any  sacrifice  which  can  be  made  by  us  in  order 
to  bring  Christianity  and  the  Bible  to  the  notice  of 
heathen  races.  No  one  can  believe  more  sincerely 
than  I  do  in  the  need  for  a  wider  understanding  of  and 
a  great  r  conformity  to  the  real  teachings  that  are  to 
be  found  in  the  Bible,  but  I  would  suggest,  as  other 
people  have  suggested,  that  we  might  begin  with 
ourselves;  we  might  proceed  to  Christianize  our- 
selves and  we  might  wind  up  by  Christianizing  some 
of  our  missionaries.  So  far  as  one  knows,  the  early 
disciples,  the  early  missionaries,  were  not  in  the  habit 
of  going  about  with  armed  troops  back  of  them  to 
defend  them  from  the  possible  hostility  of  the  natives; 
they  took  their  lives  in  their  hands;  they  had  faith  in 
their  mission  and  they  went  out  into  the  world  at 
their  own  risk.  Now,  why  should  not  our  missionaries 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  67 

do  the  same  thing  ?  It  is  perfectly  possible  that  there 
are  people  here  and  there  on  this  earth  of  ours  who 
know  just  as  little  as  some  of  us  here  do  about 
Christianity  in  itself,  and  therefore  those  people  who 
are  filled  with  an  honest  desire  to  spread  the  truths 
which  are  dear  to  them  should  be  at  perfect  liber- 
ty to  go  where  they  want  to  go,  and  to  carry 
those  truths  with  them,  but  let  them  do  it  at  their 
own  risk.  That  was  the  rule  in  the  past.  Those 
early  missionaries  were  left  to  die  if  necessary  for  the 
faith  that  was  in  them.  You  will  see  men  going  to 
foreign  countries — I  have  seen  it  myself  all  over  the 
world;  I  have  seen  it  in  India,  I  have  seen  it  in  New 
Zealand,  I  have  seen  it  in  almost  every  inhabited  part 
of  the  world;  men  going  insulting  the  religions,  the 
customs  of  the  people  whom  they  wished  to  convert, 
and  then  because  the  people  do  not  enjoy  the  process, 
because  they  often  show  their  annoyance  somewhat 
violently,  you  have  an  appeal  to  the  protection  of  the 
home  government  and  then  the  next  chapter  in  the 
history  is  that  you  proceed  to  ram  down  the  throats 
of  these  unfortunate  natives  what  is  called  Christi- 
anity; you  proceed  to  blow  it  into  them  with  Maxim 
guns  and  rifles;  and  I  think  one  of  the  most  pathetic 
things  in  history  was  the  case  of  the  German  Emperor 
— because  it  is  always  more  agreeable  to  look  abroad 
for  these  examples — the  case  of  the  German  Emperor 
who  said,  "As  Emperor  of  Germany,  and  above  all, 
as  a  Christian,  I  demand  the  heads  of  these  men." 
So  it  seems  to  me  that  this  process  of  domineering 


08  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

interference,  of  civilizing  by  force,  is  not,  on  the  whole, 
likely  to  make  these  unfortunate  natives  appreciative 
of  Christianity. 

Then  there  is  another  excuse  put  forward  for  this 
policy.  It  is  put  forward  by  people  whom  I  would 
venture  to  call  the  pseudo-scientists;  the  people  who 
speak  of  it  as  inevitable;  the  people  who  say  our  great 
civilization  must  sweep  over  these  small  obstacles  in 
the  shape  of  human  beings,  and  it  is  for  the  good  of 
the  world  generally  that  we  should  do  it,  we  cannot 
help  ourselves  anyhow.  Now,  in  the  first  place,  let 
me  suggest  to  you  that  it  is  the  aim  and  end  of 
science  to  do  away  with  that  word  "Inevitable;" 
that  it  is  the  daily  aim,  the  daily  achievement  of 
science  to  use  nature  instead  of  allowing  us  to  con- 
tinue as  the  tools  of  nature;  to  use  nature  instead  of 
being  used  by  her.  We  have,  as  Anglo-Saxons,  many 
tendencies,  some  of  them  good,  some  of  them  bad. 
Perhaps,  as  Anglo-Saxons,  some  of  us  lack  sympathy; 
find  it  diflicult  to  put  ourselves  in  the  place  of  other 
people.  Well,  as  a  tendency,  that,  like  any  other 
tendency,  can  be  overcome,  and  when  it  comes  to 
possessing  one's  self  of  other  people's  property, — 
suppose  that  you  have  your  pocket  picked  in  the 
street  and  the  man  who  has  picked  your  pocket,  when 
you  catch  him,  excuses  himself  by  saying,  "Well,  my 
great-grandfather  was  a  thief  and  my  great-grand- 
mother was  a  thief,  and  Fve  got  it  in  my  blood  and 
I  can't  help  myself  and  it's  an  inherited  tendency," — 
would  you  excuse  him  on  that  account  ?    And  when 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  69 

it  comes  to  stealing  on  a  larger  scale,  I  do  not  see  the 
difference.  And  if  we  have  this  tendency,  I  say,  sup- 
pose that  we  try  to  overcome  it, — and  therefore  it 
is  unnecessary  to  talk  of  it  as  being  inevitable.  There 
is  no  such  thing  in  this  universe  as  something  that  is 
absolutely  inevitable.  And  then,  there  is  no  need  to 
remind  such  an  audience  as  this  of  what  Herbert 
Spencer  throughout  the  whole  of  his  writings,  of  what 
Huxley — particularly  in  that  last  great  essay  of  his  on 
evolution  and  ethics — called  attention  to,  when  they 
said,  and  said  over  and  over  again,  that  it  was  a  great 
mistake  to  misinterpret  the  Darwinian  theory  to  the 
effect  that  the  survival  of  the  fittest  always  meant  the 
survival  of  the  physically  strongest.  You  will  remem- 
ber, of  course,  that  Huxley  spoke  of  the  universal 
scheme  of  evolution,  but  for  purposes  of  thought  he 
divided  this  universal  process  into  categories,  one  of 
which  he  called  the  cosmic  process,  the  other  of 
which  he  called  the  ethical  or  social  process,  and  when 
dealing  with  the  evolution  of  man  he  pointed  out  that 
man  in  the  social  state,  such  as  we  are  supposed  to 
be  in,  could  no  longer  evolve  by  adhering  to  the 
cosmic  process,  according  to  which  the  strongest 
survived,  but  could  only  evolve  by  entering  into  the 
ethical  process  and  taking  part  in  the  ethical  process 
of  development;  he  had  to  become  a  social  being  and 
unless  he  became  a  social  being  he  would  be  left  in 
this  great  race  of  progress;  the  ethical  process  became 
the  line  of  least  resistance  and  the  best  means  of 
growth.    And  what  is  true  of  an  individual  is  true  of 


70  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

a  nation,  and  that  which  caused  the  downfall  of  the 
empires  of  the  past  was  the  fact  that  they  clung  to 
the  cosmic  process;  that  they  clung  to  the  belief  that 
strength  and  brute  strength  alone  would  always  give 
them  victory,  overlooking  that  deeper  and  more  vital 
truth  that  once  the  social  state  is  entered,  then  in 
order  to  survive,  then  in  order  to  progress,  it  is 
necessary  to  become  social,  ethical,  human. 

I  do  not  wish  to  detain  you  long  in  these  opening 
remarks  because  I  am  particularly  anxious  to  meet 
with  suggestions  and  criticisms  and  opposition.  I 
think  that  a  straightahead  talk  is  much  less  interest- 
ing, as  a  rule,  than  something  approaching  a  debate, 
so  that  I  could  deal  with  claims,  further  excuses,  that 
are  made  for  this  policy,  such  as  that  "trade  follows 
the  flag" — a  hopeless  fallacy,  an  absolute  absurdity 
which  it  is  very,  very  easy  to  disprove  by  figures. 
You  take  the  figures  of  the  British  Empire  alone: 
they  will  prove  to  you  over  and  over  again  that  our 
trade  with  foreign  countries  increases  at  a  much 
greater  rate  than  our  trade  with  our  own  colonies, 
although  during  the  last  fifty  years  the  expansion  of 
those  colonies  has  increased  enormously.  I  could 
give  you  figures,  but  I  do  not  wish  to  detain  you  with 
those  figures. 

Let  me  deal  briefly  with  some  of  the  penalties  that 
we  have  to  pay  for  this  policy.  I  have  tried  to  suggest 
that  this  rage  for  interfering  in  the  aff"airs  of  other 
peoples,  for  interfering  arbitrarily,  almost  paralyzes 
domestic  reform.     We  cannot  look  after  our  home 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  71 

affairs  when  we  are  busy  civilizing  other  people.  Not 
only  that,  but  it  means  a  burden  of  increased  taxa- 
tion such  as,  I  think,  this  country  does  not  dream  of 
as  yet.  But,  take  our  own  figures  once  more,  the 
figures  of  the  British  Empire,  and  there  you  will  find 
that  it  is  not  the  wars  that  cost  so  much  money, — it 
is  the  wars  that  are  diplomatically  avoided,  it  is 
these  annual  scares  for  increased  defense;  because  the 
moment  that  you  become  aggressive,  even  verbally, 
that  moment  you  have  to  become  vigorously  defen- 
sive; you  have  to  prepare  for  attack.  So,  bounding 
up  year  by  year,  you  will  find  that  we  spend  more 
and  more  upon  our  army  and  navy,  sums  out  of  all 
proportion,  so  far  as  their  increase  is  concerned,  to 
our  income.  You  will  find,  for  instance,  that  in  1859 
we  spent  only  twenty-one  million  pounds  a  year  upon 
our  army  and  navy  and  that  then  it  went  bounding 
up,  year  by  year,  until  five  years  ago,  it  had  reached 
the  enormous  figure  of  sixty-five  million  pounds  a 
year,  and  that  then,  since  that  time,  five  years  ago, 
it  has  reached  the  enormous  total  of  one  hundred 
million  pounds  a  year,  excluding  the  cost  of  this 
little  war  in  South  Africa,  which  has  already  cost  us 
another  hundred  millons  for  defense — for  the  fun,  I 
suppose,  of  civilizing  other  people.  We  have  spent 
forty  million  pounds  upon  Egypt  and  the  Soudan, 
and  our  trade,  our  annual  trade,  has  increased  only 
five  hundred  thousand  pounds  in  the  last  ten  years. 
But  these  are  big  figures  and  talking  about  them 
with  a  mechanic  in  the  north  of  England,  he  said: 


72  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

''Well,  they  are  big;  they  don't  mean  much  to  me, 
but  I  go  by  my  own  experience.'*  He  said,  "Six 
months  after  the  war  in  South  Africa  had  broken  out 
it  cost  me,  an  ordinary  mechanic,  earning  thirty-five 
shillings  a  week,  three  shillings  and  six  pence  (or 
nearly  a  dollar)  a  week  more  to  live."  He  said, 
"Those  are  the  figures  that  speak  to  me."  But  one 
of  the  worst  things,  worse  than  taxation,  in  my 
opinion;  one  of  the  inevitable  results  of  this  policy 
is  the  growth  of  the  central  and  military  power  at  the 
expense  of  the  local  and  civil  power.  Turn  to  Rome 
and  you  will  find  in  Rome  that  this  pohcy  of  domineer- 
ing interference  centralized  a  continent  in  a  city  and 
converted  a  free  people  into  so  many  slaves,  converted 
a  republic  into  an  empire  into  the  bargain;  and,  so  far 
as  my  own  country  is  concerned,  I  find  that  already  a 
self-governing  colony  has  been  virtually  and  actually 
deprived  of  its  autonomy — Cape  Colony, — and  you  find 
exactly  the  same  process  taking  place,  centralization 
in  a  capital.  And  worst  of  all,  there  is  this  to  be  said 
about  it:  that  once  we  get  it  into  our  heads  that  it 
is  our  duty  to  civilize  others;  once  we  get  it  into  our 
heads  that  it  is  good  for  other  people  to  have  our 
flag  flying  over  them  whether  they  like  it  or  whether 
they  do  not,  then  it  becomes  a  matter  of  minor  im- 
portance as  to  how  that  flag  gets  there.  The  great 
thing  is  that  it  gets  there.  And  what  do  we  find  ? 
We  find  that  conventions,  that  agreements,  that 
undertakings  are  ignored  and  that  all  the  tricks  of 
a  petty  attorney  are  indulged  in, — bluffing,  cheating 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  73 

and  all  these  things  are  looked  upon,  well,  not 
exactly  as  justifiable  but  as  not  worthy  of  much 
attention,  so  long  as  the  nation  with  whom  we  happen 
to  be  dealing  is  sufficiently  small  to  make  it  impos- 
sible for  it  to  maintain  its  rights. 

So  much  for  the  question  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  civilizing  power.  Now  just  two  minutes  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  people  being  civilized,  because, 
after  all,  I  think  we  ought  to  take  that  into  account. 
And  let  me  quote  right  there  what  a  Boer  said  to  me 
in  Praetoria,  in  South  Africa,  during  the  war. — Before 
I  deal  with  that  I  think  I  will  branch  off  forgone 
moment,  with  your  permission,  to  say  why  I  am 
talking  as  I  am  talking  this  evening.  It  may  seem 
curious  that  an  Englishman  should  come  before  you 
and  speak  thus  freely  of  his  own  country.  ("Hear!'* 
"Hear!"  "Hear!"  Applause.)  I  am  glad  to  meet  with 
that  approval  of  my  statement.  Why  do  I  do  it  ? 
According  to  the  views  of  some  people  on  patriotism, 
it  would  be  only  right  and  honorable  for  me  to  come 
here  and  maintain  that  everything  that  my  country 
does  is  perfect;  that  "country,  right  or  wrong,"  is  the 
gospel  that  should  be  conformed  to  by  every  civilized 
being.  It  is  a  gospel  to  which  I  do  not  conform  and 
I  hope  to  Heaven  never  will.  And  which,  gentlemen, 
is  the  truer  patriotism;  which  is  the  more  honorable 
course  to  pursue.?  Should  one  support  the  action  of 
one's  country  whether  that  action  be  right  or  wrong, 
or  should  one,  on  the  other  hand,  strain  every  nerve 
in  order  to  see  that  one's  country  goes  right .?    That 


74  .  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

is  the  question.  It  was  said  the  other  day  when  I 
was  talking,  somebody  got  up  and  suggested  that 
phrase,  "One's  country  right  or  wrong" — that  at 
least  while  was  war  going  on  one  should  not  say  any- 
thing about  it.  But  let  me  suppose  for  one  moment 
that  your  brother  is  committing  a  murder,  or  a 
series  of  murders.  Is  it  your  duty  to  sit  by  and  say 
"Well,  he  is  my  brother  anyhow  and  I  don't  think  it 
would  be  quite  kind  to  interfere .?"  Or,  on  the  other 
hand,  merely  because  he  is  your  brother,  would  you 
try  all  the  more  to  prevent  the  commission  of  the 
murder  ?  That  seems  to  me  to  be  the  clearer  line  of 
duty.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  you  should  rush  to 
the  police  as  a  first  expedient.  I  say,  go  to  his  friends 
and  if  you  have  not  sufficient  strength  to  stop  it  by 
yourself,  then  privately  try  to  get  his  friends  and 
your  friends  to  persuade  him  to  desist  and  if  neces- 
sary, in  the  case  of  a  brother,  use  force  to  get  him 
to  desist.  That  seems  to  me  to  be  the  kindlier 
course.  And  then  there  is  another  view  of  it,  there 
is  the  view  of  it  which  says,  "Well,  one's  country  ? 
yes;  one  must  stand  by  it  and  work  for  it  and  suffer 
with  it," — but  there  is  also  humanity;  and  I  tell  you 
gentlemen,  that  in  England  there  are  some  men  at 
least  at  this  time  who  have  been  looking  for  years 
past  to  America  as  a  possible  example,  as  at  least  a 
reminder  to  their  own  country  of  what  freedom  means, 
of  what  independence  means,  and  when  they  see  an 
apparent  danger  hovering  over  this  land,  that  instead 
of  making  for  progress,  instead  of  making  for  expan- 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  75 

sion  of  the  higher  and  the  better  sort,  that  there 
seems  to  be  a  danger  that  this  country  will  merely 
imitate  the  follies  and  the  vices  of  the  older  lands  of 
Europe,  then  they  tremble,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  at 
the  present  time,  writ  large  in  the  sky,  for  all  men  to 
see,  there  is  a  warning, — this  war  of  ours  in  South 
Africa, — which  I  look  upon  as  a  disaster.  Defend  it  ? 
Never.  Why  defend  it  ?  Take  some  of  our  best 
people  in  England  at  the  present  time.  Take  men 
like  Herbert  Spencer,  like  Frederick  Harrison,  like 
James  Bryce,  George  Meredith,  and  the  best  of  them, 
some  of  our  best  men  as  bitterly  opposed  to  it  as  any 
men  can  be.  We  have  been  speaking  of  the  Queen 
tonight.  My  profound  and  sincere  belief  is  this,  that 
if  it  had  not  been  for  that  ruinous  and  abominable 
war  the  Queen  would  be  alive  today.  Defend  it  ? 
Never.  The  best  that  can  be  hoped  for  is  this:  That 
the  English  people,  my  own  country,  will  realize 
before  it  is  too  late  that  they  have  been  misled,  that 
they  have  been  lied  to,  month  by  month  and  year  by 
year,  before  this  war  and  during  this  war,  and  that 
they  have  been  deceived  and  have  made  a  mistake  in 
consequence.  No  one  knows  better  than  I  do  that  the 
English  people  were  honest  and  sincere  when  they 
entered  upon  it;  they  believed  that  they  were  going 
to  the  rescue  of  their  fellow-countrymen  who,  it  was 
said,  were  being  outrageously  treated  by  the  Boers 
in  South  Africa.  Nothing  of  the  sort.  I  had  the 
good  fortune  to  spend  some  eight  months  there  while 
the  war  was  going  on,  to  see  Praetoria  during  the  war, 


76  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

and  Cape  Town  during  the  war,  to  meet  Boers  and 
British,  and  I  know  better.  And  what  is  happening 
today  in  South  Africa  is  what  happened  over  a  hun- 
dred years  ago  here  and  the  only  pity  of  it  is  that 
statesmen  are  dominating  affairs  in  England  at  the 
present  time  who  are  instigated  by  the  same  motives, 
who  are  suffering  from  the  same  delusions  from 
which  Lord  North  and  his  peers  suffered  during  our 
war  with  America. 

And  now,  to  come  back  to  the  point, — and  my 
time  is  nearly  up — we  were  talking  about  this  policy 
of  domineering  interference  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  nation  domineering,  and  then  I  suggested  that 
we  should  consider  it  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
nations  or  peoples  domineered,  and  I  was  going  to 
quote  to  you  what  a  Boer  said  to  me  in  Praetoria 
during  the  war.  The  vast  majority  of  the  Boers,  as 
you  know,  are  profoundly  religious,  and  they  believe 
sincerely  that  because,  from  their  point  of  view,  their 
cause  is  just,  therefore,  from  their  point  of  view,  God 
will  undoubtedly  give  them  victory  in  the  end.  But 
this  particular  Boer  happened  to  be  an  agnostic;  he 
was  a  barrister  of  the  middle  temple  in  England;  he 
had  been  educated  at  Edinburgh  University  in  Scot- 
land; he  was  an  ordinary  Boer,  an  average  Boer,  just 
the  same.  And  I  said  to  him,  '*Well,  will  you  go  on 
fighting  after  we  get  to  Praetoria,  if  we  do  get  to 
Praetoria  ?"  He  said,  "Most  certainly."  "Well,"  I 
said,  "Do  you  think  you  will  have  a  chance  ?"  He 
said,  "There  is  no  question  of  chance."     He  said, 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  77 

"We've  got  to  do  it,  and  I  tell  you  why:  It  is  not  for 
our  own  sakes,  it  is  for  the  sake  of  our  children."  He 
said,  "I  have  seen  something  of  the  world;  I  have 
seen  India  and  I  know  there  that  the  Hindoos  have 
almost  lost  their  manhood;  they  have  been  slaves  for 
a  thousand  years;  subjugated,  first,  by  the  Mussel- 
mans,  then  by  the  British;  they  have  lost  their 
self-reliance  and  they  have  become  more  or  less  liars 
and  hypocrites;  that  is  the  tendency,  and*'  he  said,  "I 
have  been  to  Egypt  and  I  have  seen  the  Fellahs  and 
I  know  that  the  same  thing  is  true  there,"  and  he 
said,  **Do  I  want  my  children  to  live  that  sort  of  a 
Hfe  ?  No."  He  said,  "It  is  a  case  of  freedom  or  death 
and  if  we  can't  get  freedom  for  them  now  we  at  least 
have  the  right  to  die  fighting  for  their  freedom  and 
to  leave  that  as  a  memory  to  them  so  that  when  their 
time  comes  they  may  do  likewise."  And  that  is  the 
policy  of  domineering  interference  from  one  point  of 
view,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  people  domi- 
neered— civilized.  And  you  might  turn  to  the  Irish 
and  you  might  say,  "Well,  there  at  least  is  a  case  of  a 
people  who  have  not  lost  their  manhood  although 
they  have  been  subjected  to  a  foreign  power." 
Foreign  ?  Yes,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Irishman. 
But  why  is  it  that  they  have  retained  their  manhood  .? 
Because  they  have  never  become  willing  subjects. 
Now,  that  may  seem  a  strange  thing  for  an  English- 
man to  say,  but  how  about  Gladstone  ?  How  about 
Bright  ?  How  about  the  best  men  in  our  history  ? 
How  about   those  men  during  our  war  with  you — 


78  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Chatham  and  Fox  and  Burke  and  the  rest  of  them  ? 
Didn't  Chatham  himself  get  up  in  the  House  and 
say,  "I  could  almost  pray  that  some  terrible  disaster 
would  fall  upon  my  country  so  that  the  eyes  of  my 
countrymen  could  be  opened  ?"  Didn't  he  at  least 
realize  that  it  was  necessary  sometimes  to  face  public 
opinion  and  to  say,  **This  is  not  right  and  will  end 
in  disaster  ?"  If  it  had  not  been  for  those  men  where 
should  we  be  today  ? — the  greatest  names  in  our 
history;  the  men  of  whom  we  are  now  proud;  called 
traitors,  if  you  choose,  at  the  time,  and  by  many 
other  names;  that  is  a  matter  of  no  consequence, 
but  they  were  the  men  who  saw  clearly  that  popular 
opinion  of  the  hour  was  wrong  and  who  came  out 
and  said  so.  And  so  it  seems  to  me  that  from  both 
points  of  view,  whether  you  look  upon  it  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  civilizing  power  or  of  the  people 
to  be  civilized,  this  policy  is  unfortunate  and  I  hope 
at  least  that  this  country  will  never  enter  upon  it  as 
a  policy  to  be  lived  by,  by  which  the  destinies  of  this 
country  should  be  steered.  I  hope  that  this  country, 
as  it  has  been  in  the  past,  will  continue  to  exist  as  an 
example  to  all  nations  of  what  a  free  people  may 
become  and  may  do.  I  hope  that  it  will  live  forever, 
if  that  be  possible,  as  a  home  of  liberty,  and  I  hope 
that  in  the  years  to  come  the  English-speaking  people 
throughout  the  world  will  co-operate,  not  in  order  to 
deprive  weak  people  of  what  little  liberty  they  may 
already  possess,  but  in  order  to  carry  the  benefits  of 
freedom  to  all  peoples  who  desire  it.     (Applause.) 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  79 

The  topic  was  discussed  by  Messrs.  Moot,  Elmen- 
dorf,  Dunbar,  Frederick  Almy,  Powers,  Taylor,  Wil- 
cox, Monroe  and  Duschack,  after  which  the  discus- 
sion was  closed  by  Mr.  Hargrove  as  follows: 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen: — I  will  not  detain 
you  two  minutes,  but  there  are  one  or  two  points 
that  I  think  may  fairly  be  dealt  with.  First  of  all, 
however,  I  want  to  thank  you  sincerely  for  the  very 
merciful  way  in  which  you  treated  my  opening  re- 
marks. I  am  aware  that  in  a  talk  of  that  sort  it  is 
almost  necessary  to — well,  I  won't  say  offend  some 
people,  but  to  say  things  of  which  they  do  not  ap- 
prove, and  I  think  you  have  acted  up,  to  the  fullest 
extent,  to  your  motto  in  your  very  reverent  reception 
of  myself.  Now,  in  regard  to  the  missionaries,  no  one 
disputes  the  fact  that  there  are  excellent  mission- 
aries, men  who  have  done  magnificent  work.  Every- 
one agrees  to  that,  but  I  think  the  others  will  also 
agree  perhaps  with  this,  that  there  are  missionaries 
who,  let  us  say,  lack  tact.  Because,  suppose  that  a 
lot  of  Chinamen  were  to  come  to  this  country  and 
were  to  begin  to  attack  Christianity;  were  to  ridicule 
your  particular  form  of  civilization  ;  were  to  insult 
and  were  to  intrigue  against  your  President;  I  think 
that  some  of  you,  some  even  in  this  room,  might  be 
somewhat  roiled,  and  I  think  also  that  some  of  your 
\  roughs — because  all  countries  have  roughs — would 
even  resort  to  violence  to  oppose  what  they  would  call 
these  abominable  foreigners  coming  around  here  and 
insulting  everybody.    So  what  I  said  in  regard  to  the 


go  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

missionaries  was  not  levelled  at  all  missionaries,  but 
at  what  have  come  to  be  known,  unfortunately,  as 
missionary  methods. 

Now,  it  struck  me  that  a  great  many  of  the  speakers 
were  extraordinarily  willing  to  leave  the  problems 
which  confront  it  to  the  government.  Of  course, 
that  is  much  the  easiest  solution, — say,  "Well,  nobody 
knows  what  ought  to  be  done,  but  there's  the  govern- 
ment and  they  can  do  it."  It  was  a  fond — I  was 
going  to  call  it  a  fond  delusion — but  it  was  an  old 
belief  that  both  in  this  country  and  in  England  the 
people,  The  People,  were  responsible  for  the  conduct 
of  their  government.  We  in  England  elect  our  own 
members  of  parliament,  etc.,  etc.,  as  you  know,  and 
we  feel,  whether  our  own  party  is  in  office  or  out  of 
office,  that  we  have  a  voice  in  the  affairs  of  our  country. 
So  I  think  that  it  devolves  upon  every  Britisher  at 
least  to  concern  himself  in  what  is  going  on  and  to  do 
what  he  can,  to  do  what  he  feels  called  upon  to  do  in 
regard  to  the  action  of  his  government,  whether  it  is 
his  own  or  whether  it  is  the  opposition. 

Of  course,  there  was  one  very  telling  point  made  by 
one  of  the  early  speakers,  when  he  said  that  so  far 
as  the  Philippine  question  was  concerned  it  was  no 
longer  a  problem  of  whether  the  war  was  altogether 
reasonable  or  unreasonable,  but  whether  one  was  an 
American  or  not.  And  I  would  suggest  to  him  and  to 
others  who  feel  likewise — and  I  know  that  there  are 
thousands  and  thousands  of  people  both  here  and  in 
England  who  feel  the  same  way — that  two  wrongs 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  81 

will  never  make  one  right;  that  supposing,  for  the 
moment,  that  any  particular  war  is  wrong,  it  can 
never  be  made  right  by  killing  a  few  more  people. 
However,  supposing  that  you  were  involved  in  a  law- 
suit as  one  of  a  number  of  trustees,  or  a  committee 
of  some  company  or  society  or  whatever  it  may  be; 
you  enter  upon  that  law-suit  honestly,  believing  that 
you  are  in  the  right,  that  you  have  law  on  your  side 
and  that  you  also  have  justice  on  your  side;  and  that 
half  way  through  you  learn  facts  which  lead  you  to 
believe  that  you  are  in  the  wrong  and  that  both  the 
law  is  against  you  and  the  facts  are  against  you.  Now, 
what  are  you  going  to  do  ?  Are  you  going  to  say, 
"Well,  I  must  stick  by  the  committee,  I  must  see  it 
through;'*  or,  are  you  going  to  try  and  convince  your 
fellow-committeemen  that  you  have  made  a  mistake, 
and  are  you  going  to  argue  to  the  effect  that  you 
ought  to  stop  this  law-suit,  seeing  that  you  may  lose 
it,  and  that  even  if  you  win  it  you  will  win  it  unjustly  ? 
Particularly  it  seems  to  me  that  should  be  your 
course  if  you  happen  to  be  involved,  let  us  say,  with 
some  poor  widow  or  somebody  of  that  kind  who  is 
not  well  off  and  who  cannot  afford  to  lose,  and  so  on. 
Therefore  I  would  suggest  that  one  can  remain  an 
American  always,  one  can  remain  a  Britisher  always, 
and  work  actively  to  persuade  one's  fellow-committee- 
men  that  a  mistake  has  been  made.  That  seems  to 
me  to  be  the  patriotic  thing  to  do,  to  be  the  reasonable 
thing  to  do  and  to  be  the  just  thing  to  do. 

Now,  I  want  to  emphasize  one  point  that  I  did 


82  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

touch  on  briefly  in  my  opening  remarks.    No  one  can 
believe  more  profoundly  than  I  do  in  my  own  people. 
No    one    can    believe    more    sincerely    that    when 
they   entered    upon    that    South    African   war,    they 
entered  upon  it  conscientiously  believing  that  they 
were  doing  the  right  thing,  believing  that  there  was 
no  other  way  out  of  it,  and  I  am  convinced  that  what- 
ever this  country  has  done  has  been  done  by  the  mass 
of  the  people  with  the  same  conscientiousness,  with 
the  same  belief  that  it  was  the  only  solution  of  the 
trouble   which    confronted    them    at    that    moment. 
There  is  no  earthly  question  in  my  mind  about  that. 
Unfortunately,   so   far  as   our  war  is   concerned,   I 
happen  to  know  that  we  were  misled;  that  the  Eng- 
lish people  were  deceived.     One  of  the  last  things  I 
saw  on  the  eve  of  leaving  England  for  South  Africa 
was  an  enormous  placard  in  which,  in  hugh  type,  it 
said   "Boer   Outrages   on   Women" — a   hopeless   lie. 
Nothing  in  it  at  all,  but  it  was  done  in  order  to  keep 
the  war  fever  up  at  boiling  point.    Now,  we  have  in 
England  a  certain  statesman — I  want  to  defend  him; 
I  don't  believe  he  is  the  scoundrel  that  some  people 
would  paint  him  to  be;  he  is,  from  my  point  of  view, 
a    conscientious    disciple    of   Machiavelli — conscien- 
tious, sincere,  believing  as  genuinely  as  we  believe  in 
our  particular  belief,  whatever  it  may  be,  that  the 
end  justifies  the  means.     He  dreamed  a  dream  of  a 
British  South  Africa;  he  saw  the  flag  waving  down 
there;  he  thought  it  would  be  good  for  the  people, 
good  for  England  and  good  for  everybody  and  I  don't 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN 


83 


think  good  for  himself.  I  honestly  do  not  think  that 
came  into  his  head  so  much  except  by  way  perhaps  of 
reputation  or  something  of  that  sort,  but  he  thought 
that  to  have  the  flag  waving  there  would  be  so  good 
that  it  did  not  much  matter  how  the  flag  was  put 
there.  In  other  words,  that  the  end  justified  the 
means,  and  therefore  he  indulged  in  what  I  would 
call  trickery  in  order  to  bring  that  end  about  and  did 
it  believing  that  it  was  all  right.  So  you  get  at  the 
course  of  the  whole  thing  from  one  point  of  view,  that 
there  are  people,  and  there  always  have  been  people, 
who  think  that  there  is  one  standard  of  right  and 
wrong  for  individuals  and  another  standard  of  right 
and  wrong  for  nations,  and  we  must  evolve  to  the 
point  when  we  will  realize  that  ethical  laws  are  laws 
of  nature  and  that  we  cannot  run  up  against  them 
with  impunity,  that  to  do  that  is  just  as  bad  as  run- 
ning up  against  Niagara  Falls.  To  violate  a  law  of 
nature  means  trouble  and  to  violate  a  real  ethical  law 
means  trouble,  whether  you  do  it  nationally,  or 
whether  you  do  it  individually.  And  I  am  afraid,  in 
fact  I  am  convinced,  that  in  England  we  have  run  up 
against  trouble.  We  have  had  it  already  and  we  shall 
go  on  having  it,  for  the  reason  that  our  government 
has  violated  some  perfectly  plain,  simple,  every-day 
ethical  laws,  among  others,  "Thou  shalt  not  steal." 
There  is  one  final  point.  One  speaker  said  that  he 
was  perfectly  convinced  that  wherever  the  American 
flag  waves  that  it  would  be  the  decision  of  the  people 
of  this  country  that  the  same  laws  and  liberties — and 


84  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

SO  on  and  so  forth — should  go  with  the  flag  as  you 
have  here.  It  has  been  stated  to  me  that  the  govern- 
ment of  the  City  of  Nev^^  York  is  not  absolutely  per- 
fect. A  gentleman  suggests  that  it  is  the  usual  game 
of  deceiving  the  foreigner,  but  I  simply  give  you  the 
statement  for  what  it  is  worth.  Now,  they  have 
down  there  what  they  call  a  boss,  and  I  want  to  put 
this  to  you:  Supposing  for  one  moment  that  it  is  a 
very  corrupt  form  of  government,  and  so  on  and  so 
forth, — would  you  rather  have  Boss  Croker  or  would 
you  rather  be  governed  and  conquered  by  Emperor 
William  of  Germany,  even  on  condition  that  the 
Emperor  William  of  Germany  should  give  you  an 
absolutely  perfect  form  of  government }  Without  a 
moment's  hesitation  you  would  take  your  own  boss, 
because  you  want  the  feeling  ^'Well,  he's  an  American 
anyhow;  we  can  put  him  out  if  it  gets  too  hot."  And 
that  seems  to  me  to  be  a  fairly  reasonable  point  of 
view.  I  have  suggested  over  and  over  again  to  my 
own  countrymen  in  my  own  country,  at  various 
meetings,  that  if  they  were  to  be  conquered  by 
Germany  and  were  to  receive  a  really  perfect  form  of 
government  at  the  hands  of  Germany,  that  they 
would  be  unworthy  of  their  name  of  Englishmen  if 
they  remained  content  under  that  form  of  govern- 
ment. So  I  would  suggest  to  you  that  although  we 
as  Britishers,  although  you  as  Americans,  may  have 
the  fullest  faith  in  your  flag  and  in  its  virtues,  yet  it 
does  not  follow  that  all  people  should  look  upon  our 
flags  as  we  look  upon  them.     That  is  too  much  to 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN  85 

expect.  And  so  it  seems  to  me  that  some  people  may 
reasonably  occupy  the  position  mentally  that  they 
would  rather  make  a  little  hell  of  their  own  than  let 
somebody  else  make  it  for  them.     (Laughter.) 

Finally — or,  almost  finally, — I  am  quite  convinced 
of  this :  That  if  every  American  thought  and  spoke 
with  what  I  would  venture  to  call  the  sweet  reason- 
ableness, to  quote  Matthew  Arnold  and  Mr.  Wilcox 
— but  I  do  not  think  that  the  average  Britisher  feels 
exactly  as  he  spoke,  because  if  that  were  so  we  should 
have  gone  into  South  Africa  stating  beforehand  that 
we  were  simply  going  to  make  reforms  (as  a  matter  of 
fact  it  was  so  stated);  but  we  should  not  have  changed 
our  minds  half  way  through,  anyhow,  and  should  not 
have  annexed  the  country;  that  is  where  the  difference 
comes  in;  and  if  we  did  temporarily  occupy  it,  we 
should  have  declared  very,  very  clearly,  that  it  was 
only  a  temporary  measure.  Now,  it  has  been  stated 
quite  freely  that  our  flag  is  going  to  wave  there  for- 
ever. I  for  one  remember  that  Sir  Garnet  Wolseley, 
as  he  then  was,  made  exactly  the  same  declaration  in 
'79,  when  the  British  flag  was  flying  at  Praetoria 
when  he  said  it  should  never  come  down  so  long  as 
the  sun  shone.  So  even  peoples,  even  Anglo-Saxons 
may  change  their  minds,  which  is  a  good  thing  for  us 
and  for  the  rest  of  the  world. 

Now,  what  is  the  fundamental  diflference  ? — this 
is  final.  Mr.  Wilcox  spoke  somewhat  to  this  eff"ect: 
That  it  might  be  one's  duty  in  certain  circumstances 
to  adopt  some  alien  race  for  their  own  good.    Well, 


86  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

I  can  conceive  of  it.  But  let  us  take  this  as  an  ex- 
ample,— it  seems  to  me  to  be  a  not  purely  academic, 
but  a  very  important  distinction  in  attitudes  of  mind, — 
there  is  a  row^  on  your  ov^n  street;  people  in  a  house 
are  cutting  each  other's  throats;  you  go  around,  you 
feel  it  your  duty — there  is  no  policeman  near,  un- 
fortunately, and  you  go  around  and  you  try  to  stop 
all  that  throat-cutting,  and  you  perhaps  succeed. 
Nov^^  then,  you  find  that  you  have  run  into  a  family 
of  lunatics.  The  question  is  v^hether  you  are  going 
to  plume  yourself  on  having  become  possessed  of  a 
lunatic  asylum;  whether  you  are  going  to  take  it  into 
your  back  parlor;  w^hether  you  are  going  to  look  upon 
yourself  as  blessed  by  Providence,  or  whether  you  are 
going  to  take  the  first  opportunity  to  turn  that  over 
to  the  responsible  authorities  ?  That  is  looking  at  it 
from  one  point  of  view,  and  that  seems  to  me  to  be 
where  the  difference  comes  in.  The — now  I  don't  like 
to  use  the  word  ''imperialist,"  but  I  will  use  the  word 
"jingo,"  because  it  is  a  genuine  English  word.  The 
jingo  dances  with  delight  when  he  becomes  possessed 
with  a  private  lunatic  asylum,  and  the  anti-jingo, 
the  pro-Boer,  first  of  all,  tries  to  get  hold  of  a  police- 
man to  stop  the  row  and  then  if  he  gets  hold  of  a 
policeman  perhaps  goes  in  there  with  him  but  with 
regard,  always  with  regard,  always  looking  upon 
domineering  interference  as  a  misfortune — that  is 
the  point. 

So  it  comes  to  this:    We  must  realize  that  what 
injures  one  injures  all;  that  what  benefits  one  benefits 


THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURDEN^  87 

all.  Independence  is  not  sufficient;  interdependence 
is  a  fact  in  nature.  Isolation  is  an  impossibility.  No 
sane  man,  I  think,  will  get  up  and  demand  that  this 
or  any  other  country  shall  wrap  the  cloak  of  exclu- 
siveness  around  it  and  keep  aloof  from  the  affairs  of 
the  world.  You  cannot  keep  aloof  from  the  affairs 
of  the  world.  You  must  expand.  But  there  are  ways 
of  expanding.  You  can  expand  by  grabbing  other 
people's  territory  or  you  can  expand  legitimately  by 
commerce,  by  trade,  by  civilization,  by  example.  You 
can  do  what  the  trader  does;  you  can  put  up  your 
store,  you  can  sell  your  goods,  you  can  teach  the 
people  indirectly  or  you  can  do  what  some  mission- 
aries unfortunately  have  done:  go  in,  make  a  row, 
insult  the  people,  abuse  them  and  then  call  for  Maxim 
guns.  This  world  is  a  whole,  is  a  unity,  fundamen- 
tally; we  all  agree  to  that;  and  what  we  want  to  stick 
to,  I  think,  as  much  as  anything  else,  is  the  idea  that 
we  cannot  injure  any  country,  any  people,  without 
injuring  ourselves  and  without  injuring  the  whole 
world,  and  that  whatever  benefits  us  benefits  all, — 
this  great  idea  of  interdependence;  the  interdepen- 
dence of  nations;  but  the  interdependence  of  nations 
does  not  mean  universal  empire,  or  should  not  mean 
universal  empire,  because  you  cannot  have  true  inter- 
dependence, you  cannot  have  real  inter-action  unless 
you  have  self-moving  atoms,  unless  you  have  inde- 
pendence as  the  basis  of  your  work. 

And  so,   I  would  suggest  that  if  you  look  deep 
enough,  there  is  not  so  much  difference  after  all  be- 


88  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

tween  us,  because  what  we  are  all  striving  for  is  to 
do  the  right  thing,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  so  long 
as  we,  all  of  us, — imperialists  or  anti-imperialists,  or 
jingoes  or  pro-Boers,  so  long  as  we  try  sincerely  and 
honestly  to  do  the  right  thing  from  our  own  point  of 
view,  no  matter  how  much  we  may  differ  from  other 
people,  it  will  come  out  all  right  in  the  end;  it  is 
bound  to  come  out  all  right  in  the  end,  and  so  we  can 
afford  to  have  every  faith  and  confidence  not  only  in 
the  future  of  our  own  countries  but  in  the  future  of 
the  whole  world;  and  we  need  not  fear  because  it 
seems  to  some  of  us  that  wrong  has  been  done,  we 
need  not  fear  that  wrong  will  always  be  done,  because 
peoples  learn;  reaction  is  a  law  in  nature;  and  so  far 
as  Great  Britain  is  concerned,  I  believe,  from  the 
bottom  of  my  heart,  that  Mr.  Chamberlain,  for  one, 
honest  Machiavellian  though  he  be,  will  be  destroyed 
politically  by  the  very  forces  which  he  has  evoked  in 
order  to  bring  on  and  in  order  to  continue  this  war. 
There  will  be  one  of  the  biggest  reactions  in  England 
that  history  has  ever  seen,  an  even  bigger  one  than 
was  seen  after  our  war  with  you;  it  is  only  a  question 
of  time.  It  is  beginning  already,  and  if  you  will  wait 
with  patience  you  will  see  it  come  about.  South 
Africa,  from  my  point  of  view,  is  already  virtually  free, 
and  it  is  only  a  question  of  time, — and  I  have  enough 
faith  in  my  own  countrymen  to  believe  that  they  will 
soon  realize  that  a  mistake  has  been  made, — when 
without  shame,  they  will  do  what  they  did  towards 
the  close  of  their  war  with  the  American  Colonies. 


tTbirD  Dinnct. 

flDatcb  t,  1001. 

THE    RELATIONS   OF    THE    PUBLIC    SCHOOLS   TO 
BUSINESS    LIFE. 

PROF.   JEREMIAH   WHIPPLE  JENKS. 

During  the  last  hour  that  I  passed  on  the  train 
before  reaching  Buffalo  this  evening,  I  was  trying  to 
choke  down  my  disappointment  at  my  late  arrival  (not 
having  anything  else  to  choke  down),  with  the  reflec- 
tion that  you,  at  any  rate,  were  enjoying  yourselves 
here.*  I  take  occasion  to  make  that  rather  unselfish 
remark  just  now,  because  I  am  supposed  to  speak  this 
evening  on  a  topic  that  has  to  do  with  the  sordid  af- 
fairs of  life.  So,  too,  before  I  take  up  the  discussion 
of  the  way  in  which  we  may  best  train  our  children  to 
make  money,  I  should  like  to  state  briefly  my  political 
creed.  I  fear  that  otherwise  some  of  my  fellow- 
teachers  may  think  that  I  am  attempting  to  encourage 
in  the  minds  of  our  pupils,  some  ideals  that  are  not  of 
the  highest.  My  political  creed,  so  far  as  it  is  con- 
nected with  this  matter  of  education,  can  perhaps  be 
best  expressed  in  the  words  of  James  Russell  Lowell, 
taken  from  his  classic  essay  on  Democracy,  when  he 
succeeded  in  stating  better  than  any  other  person 
whom  I  know,  the  real  purpose  of  a  nation's  life. 

*Owing  to  a  delayed  train,  Prof.  Jenks  did  not  reach  the  Club  until 
near  the  close  of  the  dinner. 


90  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

He  said  something  like  this:  "The  true  value  of  a 
nation  must  be  weighed  in  scales  more  delicate  than 
the  balance  of  trade.  The  garners  of  Sicily  are  empty 
now,  but  the  bees  from  all  climes  still  fetch  honey 
from  the  tiny  garden  plot  of  Theocritus.  On  a  map 
of  the  world  you  may  cover  Judea  with  your  thumb, 
and  Athens  with  a  finger  tip  and  neither  of  them 
figure  in  the  prices  current,  but  they  still  lord  it  in 
the  thought  and  actions  of  every  civilized  man.  Did 
not  Dante  cover  with  his  hood  all  that  was  Italy  six 
hundred  years  ago  ?  And  if  we  go  back  a  century, 
where  was  Germany  outside  of  Weimar  .?  Material 
success  is  good,  but  only  as  the  necessary  preliminary 
to  better  things.  The  only  measure  of  a  nation's  true 
success  is  the  amount  that  it  has  contributed  to  the 
knowledge,  the  moral  energy,  the  intellectual  happi- 
ness and  the  spiritual  hope  and  consolation  of  man- 
kind. There  is  no  other,  let  our  candidates  flatter 
us  as  they  may."  Material  success  is  good  and  it  is 
worth  our  while  to  spend  an  evening  in  considering 
the  way  to  get  material  success,  but  material  success, 
as  Lowell  says,  is  only  the  necessary  preliminary  to 
better  things  in  our  nation's  life. 

So  we  may  also  with  profit  go  back  to  that  earlier 
scholar-politician,  Pericles,  when  in  that  famous 
funeral  oration — in  the  Kerameicus  over  the  heroes 
that  had  fallen  at  Marathon,  he  expressed  the  aim 
and  purpose  of  Athens,  as  he  understood  it :  "We,  (the 
Athenians,  he  said),  we  aim  at  a  life  beautiful  without 
extravagance,    contemplative  without   unmanliness. 


\ 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  91 

Wealth  with  us  is  a  thing  not  for  ostentation,  but  for 
reasonable  use,  and  it  is  not  the  acknowledgment  of 
poverty  that  we  think  disgraceful,  but  the  lack  of 
endeavor  to  avoid  it." 

Now,  it  has  seemed  to  me  that  there  is  grave  reason 
for  complaint  in  our  society  that  very  many  of  our 
citizens  do  not  show  the  proper  sense  of  shame  at  the 
lack  of  endeavor  to  avoid  poverty,  and  we  do  not 
have  so  just  a  view  of  wealth  as  did  Pericles. 

We  have,  besides  this,  very  many  ills  in  our  social 
life.  Some  of  those  ills  it  is  thought  that  our  public 
schools  can  perhaps  cure,  and  it  is  the  cure  of  some 
of  those  ills  that  I  wish  to  speak  of  tonight.  Not  all 
of  the  ills  connected  with  business  life,  not  all  of  the 
ills  connected  with  the  poverty  of  our  working  people, 
can  be  cured  by  the  public  schools.  Some  of  the 
faults  of  the  workingmen,  some  of  the  evils  that  come 
to  them,  are  matters  that  come  from  their  personal 
characteristics.  Those  can  be  touched  by  the  public 
schools,  but  it  is  frequently  true  that  when  a  crisis 
comes  men  are  thrown  out  of  employment  or  meet 
with  other  misfortunes  through  no  fault  of  their  own, 
no  matter  how  diligent,  how  intelligent,  how  able 
they  may  be.  Those  are  ills  that  the  public  schools 
cannot  touch. 

Perhaps  we  had  better  analyze  briefly  some  of  the 
preventable  ills  and  some  of  the  faults  of  the  work- 
ingmen. We  can  perhaps  best  sum  them  up  briefly 
under  four  heads.  In  the  first  place,  the  workingmen 
are  in  many  cases  ignorant.    They  lack  the  skill,  the 


92  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

knowledge  that  is  necessary  to  give  them  a  good 
livelihood.  It  is  an  unfortunate  fact,  it  is  a  pitiful 
thought  that,  during  all  ages  of  the  world's  history, 
the  great  masses  of  men  have  been  merely  hewers  of 
wood  and  drawers  of  water,  mere  servants  for  the 
comparatively  few  that  could  direct  them,  could  tell 
them  what  to  do.  Many  of  the  world's  great  thinkers 
from  the  days  of  Plato  to  the  present,  have  thought 
that  this  was  a  condition  that  must  always  exist; 
that  only  the  comparatively  few  were  to  stand  above 
the  dead  level,  not  merely  of  mediocrity,  but  of 
abject  submission  so  far  as  work  was  concerned.  It 
has  seemed  to  me  that  in  these  later  days  this  dictum 
of  Plato  and  Aristotle  that  the  great  mass  must  work 
in  order  that  the  philosophers  and  the  thinkers  might 
have  leisure  to  advance  society,  is  no  longer  true, 
owing  to  the  great  inventions  of  modern  times;  owing 
to  the  fact  that  most  hand  labor  can  be  done  now 
by  the  forces  of  nature.  We  may  hope  to  see,  later 
at  any  rate,  the  great  mass  of  our  working  people,  all 
of  them,  reaching  positions  of  comfort  in  spite  of 
their  lack  of  skill,  in  spite  of  their  ignorance. 

The  second  lack  of  our  workingmen  is  this:  Not 
so  much  that  they  lack  absolute  knowledge,  but  that 
their  knowledge  is  inappropriate  to  the  occasion;  it  is 
misfit  knowledge.  During  the  earlier  part  of  the 
present  century  when  in  England  the  power  looms 
first  came  into  operation,  we  that  know  the  hand 
looms  in  the  cottages  had  to  stand  idle;  the  cottage 
weavers  starved;  many  of  their  children  died;  the 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  93 

weavers  themselves  were  riotous,  breaking  the  power 
looms,  destroying  and  burning  the  newer  factories. 
Many  of  our  social  reformers  speak  of  those  acts  of 
rioting  as  something  blameworthy,  and  we  all  speak 
of  any  disturbance  of  the  public  peace  as  something 
that  is  to  be  condemned.  Of  course  that  is  true,  but 
though  blameworthy,  their  acts  are  easily  to  be  ex- 
plained. Through  no  fault  of  their  own;  through 
simply  a  shifting  and  changing  of  public  conditions 
for  which  they  were  in  no  way  to  blame,  they  were 
forced  to  starve  and  to  see  their  children  dying.  We 
might  expect  rioting  for  the  purpose  of  securing  bread. 
It  was  not  so  much  their  fault,  although,  of  course, 
I  do  not  wish  in  any  way  to  excuse  rioting.  Their 
condition  was  the  fate  that  came  with  advancing 
civilization.  It  is  always  true  that  with  social  prog- 
ress many  must  suffer.  Misfit  knowledge  then  is 
another  cause  of  suffering. 

The  third  ill,  or  fault,  that  I  have  in  mind  is  par- 
ticularly a  matter  of  character.  So  far  as  my  slight 
experience  in  business  life  goes  and  so  far  as  the  very 
much  wider  experience  of  many  of  my  friends  goes, 
many  of  our  workingmen  have  this  very  grave  fault: 
They  are  not  fully  faithful  to  their  task.  When  the 
noon  whistle  comes,  the  work  is  stopped  suddenly, 
the  pick  left  hanging  in  the  air,  as  they  say;  when 
the  whistle  for  beginning  work  blows,  the  men  start 
much  more  slowly,  much  more  deliberately  into  their 
work;  they  are  not  so  anxious  to  start  as  they  are  to 
stop.     Again,  many  workingmen  are  careless  about 


94  ■  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

their  tools;  they  are  not  exact  with  reference  to  the 
work  that  is  done;  they  do  not  render  the  most  care- 
ful account  of  work  that  is  put  into  their  hands. 
This  lack  of  absolute  trustworthiness  is  a  weakness 
of  character  in  the  men  themselves,  and  that  state  of 
mind  certainly  ought  to  be  improved. 

I  do  not  think  that  the  workingmen  alone  are  to 
be  blamed  along  this  line.  The  employers  are  often 
as  much  at  fault.  While  the  workingmen  are  very 
careful  not  to  do  too  much,  not  to  earn  more  than 
their  wages,  in  many  cases  the  employers  are  equally 
careful  on  their  side  not  to  pay  more  wages  than  the 
men  earn.  On  both  sides  it  is  the  unwillingness  to 
give  a  full,  fair,  complete  equivalent  for  what  they 
are  themselves  receiving,  and  one  side  is  as  much  to 
blame  as  the  other.  But  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
suffering  of  the  workingmen  and  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  good  of  society,  the  workingmen  are  certainly 
to  be  blamed  for  this  lack  of  faithfulness  in  their 
work,  carried  out  to  the  minutest  detail.  Not  merely 
are  they  to  be  blamed,  not  merely  does  society  suffer 
from  that  fault,  but  it  is  also  true  that  in  many  cases 
they  themselves  are  sufferers  thereby.  We  all  know 
how  readily  a  young  man  who,  in  business,  attempts 
to  give  his  employer  more  than  his  task  calls  for,  is 
at  once  promoted.  I  recall  very  distinctly  an  instance 
that  came  within  my  own  knowledge.  A  young  man 
entered  the  employ  of  a  firm  in  which  his  cousin  was 
a  partner.  The  day  before  he  began  his  work  his 
cousin  called  him  into  his  office  and  said,  "John, 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  95 

today  you  are  my  cousin.  I  want  to  give  you  some 
advice.  Tomorrow^  you  w^ill  be  one  of  the  v^orking- 
men.  You'll  be  nothing  more  to  me  than  anybody 
else.  I'm  a  partner.  On  account  of  my  relationship 
to  you  after  today  I  shall  show  you  no  favors;  I  shall 
never  mention  you  for  promotion;  you  must  get  your 
promotion  through  the  other  partners.  I  have  this 
advice  to  give:  Don't  be  afraid  that  you  are  earning 
more  than  your  wages;  do  everything  that  you  can  do 
that  will  benefit  the  firm  and  trust  to  the  future  for 
your  pay."  The  young  man  followed  the  advice  and 
in  a  very  short  time  he  had  made  a  marked  success. 
He  was  in  a  few  years  one  of  the  partners.  It  is  the 
old,  old  story,  of  course,  of  the  good  boy  that  becomes 
a  partner,  but  nevertheless  it  is  true,  and  it  is  a  kind 
of  story  that  may  well  be  often  repeated,  because  in 
many  cases,  if  not  in  most  cases,  actual  success  does 
come  from  this  willingness  of  spirit  to  do  more  than 
is  asked.  The  third  fault  of  the  workingmen  then  is 
this:  The  desire  to  get  rather  more  than  they  give. 
The  fault  is  equally  great,  in  my  judgment,  on  the 
side  of  the  employer. 

The  fourth  mistake,  or  fault,  is  this:  The  work- 
ingmen, speaking  generally,  fail  to  recognize  their 
social  obligations.  Businessmen  in  general  fail  to 
recognize  their  relations  to  one  another  and  their 
relations  to  society.  A  butcher  in  business  sells  meat 
to  his  neighbors  to  make  money;  he  wants  his  profit; 
in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  he  does  not  realize  the  fact 
that  he  is  also  rendering  a  great  service  to  society, 


96  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

and  that  if  he  fails  to  keep  his  shop  clean,  if  he  fails 
to  sell  meat  that  is  healthful,  he  is  doing  a  grave 
injury  to  society.  He  is  in  business  for  money  making. 
He  ought  to  realize  also  that  he  is  in  business  to 
render  service  to  society.  So  also  with  reference  to 
men  in  any  other  line  of  w^ork.  Any  merchant,  any 
manufacturer,  any  business  man  of  any  kind,  cannot 
cut  himself  loose  from  his  social  obligations.  Nine 
men  out  of  ten  think  they  do  so  very  largely.  They 
are  in  business  for  the  sake  of  the  money  that  is  in 
it  for  them.  This  is  natural,  but  at  the  same  time 
they  v^ill  render  much  better  service,  and  probably 
without  lessening  their  profits  very  much  if  they  will 
keep  the  social  obligation  also  in  mind. 

We  ought,  all  of  us,  to  recognize  much  more  than 
we  do  what  the  complexity  of  our  industrial  life  is, 
and  how  closely  we  are  tied  one  to  another.  Think, 
for  example,  of  this  banquet  this  evening;  think  of 
the  food  that  we  have  had  here,  of  the  clothes  that  we 
wear,  of  the  pencil  that  the  gentleman  is  using,  any- 
thing of  that  kind, — how  many  people  have  con- 
tributed their  service  in  order  that  we  might  have 
this  bit  of  enjoyment  tonight.  Many  of  these  things 
have  come  from  across  the  sea.  Workingmen  have 
been  toiling  on  the  other  side,  and  mechanics,  ship- 
builders, sailors,  by  the  hundreds,  by  the  thousands* 
have  been  at  work  in  order  that  some  one  little  thing 
might  be  brought  here  to  us.  There  is  not  a  day 
passes,  but  that  if  we  analyze  to  the  bottom  the 
production  of  any  of  the  goods  that  we  use,  we  shall 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  97 

find  that  thousands  of  men  have  been  working  for 
each  one  of  us;  and,  if  we  have  paid  our  debts  in  the 
honest  way  in  whith  we  ought,  we  shall  have  rendered 
a  return  service  and  we  shall  have  served  also  thou- 
sands of  men.  Now,  this  social  solidarity,  this  rela- 
tionship of  one  man  in  the  community  to  another, 
the  inter-action  and  inter-relation  of  all  business 
enterprises,  is  something  that  is  not  recognized  by 
the  workingmen,  is  not  recognized  by  business  men; 
but  it  ought  to  be  so  recognized,  and  it  must  be, 
before  we  can  have  the  comforts  in  society  as  general 
as  they  might  be. 

These  are  the  faults  that  I  wished  to  speak  of, 
which  we  find  continually.  Can  our  public  schools 
do  anything  regarding  them  so  that  social  conditions 
will  be  improved  ?  What  do  our  public  schools  do 
now  to  prepare  workingmen  better  for  life .?  Refer- 
ence has  been  made  here  to  the  public  schools  of 
Buffalo.  What  I  have  to  say  has  nothing  to  do  with 
them.  I  know  nothing  about  the  public  schools  of 
Buffalo  except  that  I  hear  them  very  well  spoken  of 
elsewhere.  But  what  applies  to  most  of  the  schools 
throughout  the  Union  will  probably  apply,  in  part,  to 
Buffalo.  Now,  what  do  the  public  schools  in  general 
throughout  the  United  States  do  to  remove  these 
evils  that  I  have  spoken  of?  Do  our  public  schools 
give  manual  skill,  for  example,  that  will  help  the 
ordinary  workingman  to  earn  his  living  ?  Only,  I 
should  say,  to  a  very  slight  extent.  Let  us  think  what 
we  mean  when  we  are  speaking  of  the  workingman. 


98  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

We  are  speaking  of  probably  nine  out  of  ten  of  the 
people  in  the  community.  Of  course,  that  does  not 
mean  that  they  work  any  harder  than  the  people  who 
are  here  this  evening  do.  It  means  that  they  are 
ordinarily  called  workingmen  because  they  are  doing 
manual  labor.  Do  our  public  schools  do  anything 
to  fit  people  f(jr  manual  labor,  skilled  or  unskilled, 
which  so  very,  very  many  in  the  community  must 
follow  in  order  to  make  their  living  ?  As  I  have  said, 
very  little.  There  are  a  few  manual-training  schools 
in  the  country.  There  are  one  or  two  in  almost  every 
large  city.  In  most  of  our  public  schools  there  is  the 
beginning  of  a  manual  training  system  that,  it  is  to 
be  hoped,  will  be  very  much  developed  in  the  com- 
paratively near  future.  But  the  amount  of  service 
now  rendered  is  very  slight.  It  is  true  the  schools  do 
teach  reading,  writing,  arithmetic;  they  give  a  little 
something  of  skill  in  reading,  of  skill  in  figuring,  that 
is  useful  in  almost  every  line  of  work,  but  it  is,  after 
all,  a  very  little  as  compared  with  what  might  be  done. 
Take  the  second  point:  Do  our  public  schools  do 
anything  to  protect  people  from  the  effects  of  the 
misfit  knowledge  of  which  I  have  spoken  .?  People 
need  adaptability.  If  a  man  loses  one  job  he  wants  to 
be  ready  enough  and  prompt  enough  and  with 
knowledge  enough  to  turn  his  attention  in  another 
direction.  This  adaptability,  too,  must  be  not  merely 
a  matter  of  technical  knowledge,  it  must  be  a  matter 
also  of  willingness,  because  very  many  of  our  work- 
ingmen, when  out  of  work,  fail  to  take  another  job, 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE 


99 


because  they  are  too  proud  to  do  so,  thinking  it 
beneath  them  to  change  their  calling.  I  recall  a 
wagon-maker,  thrown  out  of  his  trade  some  years  ago 
for  the  whole  winter;  there  were  plenty  of  opportuni- 
ties for  him  to  make  a  dollar  or  a  dollar  and  a  half, 
sometimes  even  two  dollars  a  day  by  shovelling  snow 
or  doing  other  unskilled  work,  but  he  was  utterly 
unwilling  to  do  anything  of  that  kind ;  he  was  a  wagon- 
maker;  he  would  do  nothing  else;  and,  in  consequence, 
his  daughter  supported  him  during  the  winter,  in 
good  part.  Now,  our  public  schools  can  do  something 
more,  in  my  judgment,  than  they  are  doing  now  to 
take  away  from  the  great  mass  of  people  that  spirit 
of  unwillingness  to  do  anything  except  in  one  specific 
trade  in  the  community. 

Take  the  third  point,  the  matter  of  training 
character  so  as  to  secure  faithfulness.  What  are  our 
public  schools  doing  in  that  line  ?  Very  much,  I 
should  say.  More  than  in  any  other  direction,  and 
still  there  is  much  to  be  wished  for.  Our  public 
schools  teach  punctuality,  exactness,  neatness;  they 
teach  also,  that  it  is  within  the  power  of  a  person  to 
v  do  a  specific  task  and  know  when  it  is  well  and  thor- 
oughly done.  All  those  are  essential  qualifications 
for  any  business  man,  be  he  small  or  great.  But 
even  in  this  field  there  is  something  wanting:  those 
things,  in  many  cases,  are  taught  as  matters  of  com- 
pulsion. My  children  are  prompt  at  school,  because 
they  are  afraid  to  be  late.  They  get  their  lessons  well, 
because  they  are  afraid  to  fail.     Now,  the  spirit  of 


100  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

the  successful  business  man,  the  spirit  of  the  success- 
ful workingman,  is  not  to  do  things  well  under  com- 
pulsion. He  must  do  them  spontaneously,  because  he 
yfeels  that  it  is  his  task  to  do  them  and  that  he  wishes 
to  do  them  well.  Our  public  schools  do  not,  I  am 
afraid,  get  that  spirit  of  spontaneous  self-direction 
into  their  work  and  into  the  pupils'  minds  to  the 
extent  that  is  desirable. 

So  with  reference  to  the  fourth  point,  the  feeling 
of  social  responsibility.  Is  it  not  true  that,  speaking 
generally,  we  are  taught  in  our  schools  that  the  indi- 
vidual pupil  is  to  be  developed  for  his  own  sake  .?  It 
is  certainly  true  that  in  most  of  our  teachers'  gather- 
ings that  is  the  thought  that  I  see  brought  forward 
most  often.  "Teach  this;  teach  it  in  this  way;  do  this 
thing  in  the  schools  in  order  that  the  individual  may 
be  developed,"  and  the  other  side  of  the  matter,  that 
he  should  be  developed  for  the  sake  of  society  on 
account  of  the  relationship  that  he  has  with  others, 
is  very  frequently  ignored.  In  our  schools  generally 
we  find  that  our  teachers  have  not  themselves  this 
consciousness  of  social  inter-action,  social  solidarity 
that  they  ought  to  have  and  that  they  ought  to  put 
into  their  pupils'  minds  and  hearts.  Some  little  is 
done;  much  more  might  be  done. 

What  is  the  problem  then  left  for  our  schools  .?  It 
is  two-fold.  First,  to  keep  the  children  in  the  schools; 
second,  to  train  them.  Our  pupils,  as  a  rule,  do  not 
come  to  the  schools  long  enough  to  get  the  full  effect 
of  the  many  good  things  that  the  schools  are  giving 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  IQI 

them.  I  do  not  know  exactly  what  the  situation  may 
be  here  in  Buffalo,  but  it  is  probably  true  that  70  per 
cent,  of  your  children  leave  the  public  schools  before 
they  are  12  years  of  age.  Under  those  circumstances 
we  cannot  expect  to  do  very  much.  So  that  the  first 
part  of  our  problem  is,  how  can  we  keep  our  children 
longer  in  the  public  schools  ?  The  second  part,  how 
can  we  train  them  best  while  they  are  there  ? 

Now,  we  can  keep  them  in  the  public  schools  by 
making  them  feel  that  the  public  schools  pay,  and 
particularly  if  we  can  make  their  parents  feel  that 
the  schools  are  of  real  value.  Everyone  of  us,  of 
course,  more  or  less  consciously,  is  trying  to  live  up 
to  his  ideals.  Those  ideals  may  be  lower,  they  may 
be  higher;  but  we  are  working  ahead  for  something 
that  was  put  before  us  to  strive  for.  That  is  true  also 
with  reference  to  the  parents  of  our  children  in  the 
public  schools,  and  we  cannot  exert  any  influence 
upon  them  unless  we  see  what  their  ideals  are.  Now, 
we  usually  say,  we  teachers,  that  we  ought  to  train 
character;  that  character  is  the  prime  thing.  So  it 
is.  But  do  our  pupils,  do  their  parents  feel  that .? 
Do  they  think  that .?  Can  they,  from  the  very  nature 
of  the  case,  have  that  in  their  hearts  .?  Is  it  not  true 
that  a  man  who  is  working  every  day,  all  day  long, 
in  order  that  he  may  get  enough  to  eat,  and  then  goes 
hungry  part  of  the  time,  is  likely  to  be  thinking  of 
something  else  than  character  development  ?  He  is 
thinking  of  dinner.  I  recall  very  well  a  dear  old  lady 
friend  of  mine  who  worked  all  day  long  and  half  the 


102  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

night  caring  for  her  household,  caring  for  her  children, 
doing  her  duty  as  she  saw  her  duty  from  day  to  day, 
and  I  have  heard  her  say,  time  after  time,  **0h,  I'll  be 
so  glad  when  I  get  to  Heaven,  because  then  I  think  I 
can  have  a  rest.'*  The  ideal  that  she  had  before  her 
was  rest;  rest  was  the  greatest  happiness  that  she 
could  have  in  Heaven.  Now,  when  a  person  is  feeling 
that  way,  he  is  not  likely  to  look  very  much  higher 
than  ordinary  physical  comforts.  And  so  I  should  say, 
speaking  generally,  that  the  parents  of  most  of  the 
children  in  our  public  schools  are  not  looking  primari- 
ly for  the  development  of  character  in  their  children. 
What  they  want  is  the  development  of  money-earning 
power.  If  they  can  get  that,  they  will  be  satisfied  with 
our  public  schools,  and  if  they  can  feel  that  our  public 
schools  are  giving  that,  they  will  let  their  children 
stay,  otherwise  not.  The  children  themselves  have, 
to  a  very  great  extent,  as  we  all  know,  the  same  feel- 
ing; it  comes  from  the  same  source.  If  then  we 
speak  of  the  problem  of  doing  something  more  to 
develop  money-earning  power  in  order  to  hold  the 
children  in  the  schools  to  develop  them  in  the  best 
way  intellectually,  we  must  attack  that  problem 
directly.  I,  of  course,  do  not  need  to  go  into  detail 
with  any  such  subject  as  that  here.  I  could  not. 
Substantially,  I  should  say,  the  essence  of  the  solu- 
tion of  the  whole  problem  is  this,  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  curriculum:  give  the  children  in  the  main  a 
training  that  will  be  suited  to  the  kind  of  life  that 
they  are  going  to  live  hereafter.    That  means,  if  you 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  103 

wish  to  use  that  technical  phrase,  give  them  manual 
training  or  commercial  training  in  the  broadest 
sense  of  that  word;  but  it  means,  after  all,  a  manual 
training,  different  from  that  usually  found  in  our 
schools.  We  must  make  our  schools  take  hold  on 
life  much  more  closely  than  they  do  now.  In  almost 
every  community  there  are  certain  special  kinds  of 
business  that  the  parents  of  the  children  chiefly  fol- 
low. In  many  communities  in  large  cities,  in  one 
section  of  the  city  one  kind  of  business  will  be  fol- 
lowed primarily;  in  another  section  another  kind. 
The  manual  training  can  often,  to  a  considerable 
extent,  be  adapted  to  the  special  needs  of  each  par- 
ticular part  of  the  city.  At  any  rate,  it  can  be  so 
shaped  that  the  parents  of  the  pupils  themselves  will 
see  that  it  is  directly  practical.  In  most  of  our 
manual  training  schools  now  the  purpose  of  the 
teachers  primarily  is  to  develop  the  skill  of  the  hand 
and  the  brain,  to  train  the  pupil  himself.  That  is 
right,  but  we  must  go  further  than  that;  we  have  to 
convince  the  parents  that  that  training  is  practical. 
The  making  of  joints  accurately  and  carefully  is 
good;  but  giving  that  boy  power  to  mend  a  chair  at 
home  or  to  fix  his  mother's  lock  would,  in  all  proba- 
bility, have  a  good  deal  more  direct  effect  upon  the 
parent,  making  him  feel  that  the  work  was  practical. 
In  another  section  of  the  city  we  might  start  com- 
mercial training  in  the  same  way,  so  that  the  parent 
could  see  that  the  children  were  learning  the  values 
of  things,  and  the  ways  in  which  they  were  exchanged. 


104  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Since  time  will  not  permit  the  complete  develop- 
ment of  the  subject,  let  me  indicate  the  method  fol- 
lowed in  the  training  school  of  the  University  of 
Chicago,  conducted  by  Prof.  John  Dewey,  in  connec- 
tion with  the  work  of  training  teachers.  The  essen- 
tial thought  is  this:  We  must  make  the  school  as  near 
like  social  life  as  possible;  we  must  let  the  children 
see  how  our  lives  and  our  civilization  have  developed, 
in  order  that  they  may  get  interest  in  thatw  ay  in 
practical  life.  For  example,  in  connection  with  the 
textile  trades,  wool  or  cotton  are  taken  in  the  original 
state;  the  children  are  taught  the  conditions  under 
which  this  wool  or  cotton  must  be  spun  into  yarn; 
they  are  thus  led  to  invent  the  methods  of  spinning; 
then  they  are  led  to  invent  the  simplest  kind  of  a  loom 
for  weaving  yarn  into  cloth;  later  on,  of  course,  they 
are  shown  the  better  kinds  of  loom.  In  like  manner 
they  are  led  by  means  of  other  inventions  through 
the  history  of  the  race,  seeing  how  these  matters 
which  touch  our  daily  lives  have  been  developed,  and 
they  understand  it;  they  are  living  over  the  industrial 
life  that  people  have  lived  before  them;  they  are 
themselves  living  the  life  now  that  these  pupils  must 
live  who  engage  in  that  kind  of  work  hereafter, 
whether  it  be  the  cotton  or  wool  manufacture.  So, 
in  connection  with  the  products  that  I  have  spoken 
of,  they  naturally  study  the  geography  that  goes  with 
them.  They  learn  where  these  products  come  from. 
In  the  other  lines  of  training — cooking,  for  instance, — 
in  the  same  way,  they  learn  the  elements  of  chemistry; 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  105 

in  Still  other  manual  work  they  learn  the  elements  of 
physics  that  are  constantly  employed  in  industrial 
life.  These  examples  show  the  thought  that  will  go 
with  this  kind  of  manual  training:  the  intention  is 
to  make  the  school  as  near  like  life  as  possible,  and  to 
connect  the  other  studies  of  our  public  schools  with 
the  industrial  training.  Let  reading  and  number 
work  be  subordinate.  It  will  be  more  interesting  if 
it  has  a  definite  purpose.  I  had  the  greatest  trouble 
with  my  own  little  boy  to  get  him  to  read.  He  did 
not  care  about  fairy  stories;  "Robinson  Crusoe"  did 
not  interest  him;  but  at  length  I  found  him  lying 
awake  nights  and  spelling  out,  with  the  aid  of  pic- 
tures, the  "American  Boy's  Handy  Book,"  in  order 
that  he  might  learn  how  to  make  a  sled,  how  to  make 
a  kite  and  fly  it.  The  "American  Boy's  Handy  Book" 
taught  him  how  to  read,  when  "Robinson  Crusoe" 
and  fairy  tales  could  not  do  it.  Of  course,  not  all 
children  have  that  taste,  but  very  many  have,  and 
most  children  do  have  this  practical  way  of  looking 
at  things.  Most  children  are  much  more  interested 
in  finding  out,  for  example,  how  their  parents  and 
grandparents  and  ancestors  lived  industrially  than 
they  are  about  the  political  movements  of  the  early 
days,  or,  even  in  many  cases,  about  the  military 
movements,  although  most  boys,  at  any  rate,  like  war. 
So  we  should  start  with  our  school,  at  the  begin- 
ning in  the  lowest  grades,  and  this  same  idea  of  its 
relation  to  actual  life  should  run  through  to  the 
commercial  high  school,  to  the  manual  training  high 


106  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

school,  to  the  technical  school,  to  also  our  present 
Latin  schools,  because  we  want  professional  men  of 
all  kinds  as  well  as  merchants  and  artisans.  The  one 
thought:  adapt  the  schools  to  life  and  to  life  as  it  is 
in  the  community,  for  all  the  different  classes  of  the 
community,  is  the  thought  I  have  in  mind. 

How  w^ill  that  plan  work  out  as  regards  the  solu- 
tion of  these  difficulties  among  workmen  of  which 
I  have  spoken  ?  It  will,  in  the  first  place,  to  a  con- 
siderable extent,  give  the  technical  training,  the 
technical  knowledge  needed;  it  will  also,  to  a  con- 
siderable extent,  much  more  than  anything  we  have 
now,  give  adaptability,  the  readiness  to  turn  from 
one  line  of  activity  to  another.  The  children  will  see 
the  relations  of  things  much  better  than  they  could 
do  before.  It  will  also,  and  it  does  also — it  is  not 
entirely  a  matter  of  experiment,  by  any  means — it 
will  also  and  it  does  also  develop  the  other  habits  that 
tend  to  develop  character,  to  as  great  a  degree  as  our 
present  system  does;  I  will  not  say  better  than  that. 
It  will  make  people  faithful,  I  mean.  It  does  teach 
much  better  than  anything  we  have  in  our  public 
schools  now  the  interdependence  of  one  upon  another, 
and  the  essential  solidarity  of  all  human  interests. 
That  comes  from  the  nature  of  the  case.  The  pupils 
have  to  work  things  out  together. 

But  there  is  one  thing  more  of  prime  importance 
along  that  line.  I  believe  that  when  the  question  is 
one  of  the  development  of  character,  of  faithfulness, 
of  showing  these  relations  of  one  person  to  another. 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  107 

the  chief  influence,  after  all,  is  the  teacher  and  the 
character  of  the  teacher.  I  remember  hearing  Bishop 
Spaulding  once  a  number  of  years  ago  before  a 
teachers'  gathering,  in  speaking  of  the  essentials  of 
education,  say  that,  in  his  judgment,  the  only  true 
education  is  that  which  comes  from  the  immediate 
touch  of  soul  with  soul.  If  we  stop  to  think  of  the 
effect  upon  ourselves  that  has  been  made  by  our 
teachers  in  schools,  in  college,  or,  if  not  limiting  our- 
selves to  the  schools,  we  go  outside  and  ask  what  the 
influences  are  that  have  shaped  our  mental  habits 
most,  we  shall  find  that  the  chief  influence  has  been 
some  other  person.  The  truest  education,  after  all, 
is,  in  my  judgment,  the  influence  of  a  riper,  of  a 
nobler,  of  a  higher,  of  a  better  nature  upon  one  less 
mature.  We  must  then  look  after  our  teachers,  and 
if  our  teachers  themselves  are  persons  that  have  the 
spirit  of  faithfulness  of  which  I  have  spoken,  our 
children  will  get  it.  We  are  to  be  congratulated  upon 
the  fact,  in  my  judgment,  that  speaking  generally, 
our  teachers  do  have  this  spirit  of  faithfulness  and  of 
devotion  to  their  work,  but  if  they  had  it  to  a  greater 
degree,  that  means,  if  we  were  to  get  people  of  a 
higher  type  for  our  teachers  than  we  have  now,  we 
should  have  a  stronger  influence  upon  our  children 
than  we  have  now.  Is  it  not  true  after  all  that  our 
children  of  the  public  schools, — (those  of  you  who 
have  children  can  judge  whether  I  am  right  or  not), — 
is  it  not  true  that  they  at  times  come  home  and  in- 
stead of  feeling  that  their  teachers  are  higher  and 


108  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

better  and  nobler  than  they  are, — people  whom  they 
would  be  glad  to  imitate,  do  they  not  rather  make  fun 
of  the  teachers,  thinking  that  one  is  small  and  tricky 
and  that  another  is  trying  to  make  them  do  something 
because  she  wants  to  escape  some  labor  ? 

If  I  were  speaking  to  teachers  I  should  go  more 
into  detail  with  reference  to  the  personal  characteris- 
tics of  teachers.  But  I  am  speaking  to  the  people 
who  pay  the  teachers.  And  that  brings  the  matter 
up  from  another  point  of  view:  why  is  it  that  we 
do  not  have  better  teachers  in  our  public  schools  .? 
If  you  go  to  teachers'  gatherings  you  find  that  the 
chief  complaint  of  superintendents  is  this:  that  our 
teachers  are  the  same  unskilled  craftsmen  that  I  have 
been  speaking  about  in  connection  with  business  life. 
The  great  mass  of  our  teachers — perhaps  that  is  put- 
ting it  too  strong;  very,  very  many  of  our  teachers  are 
the  unskilled  craftsmen  who  are  not  able  to  exert  the 
influence  that  they  ought  to  exert  in  the  way  of 
uplifting  the  pupils  and  giving  them  the  sense  of 
social  responsibility.  They  have  not  the  knowledge; 
in  many  cases  they  have  not  the  strength  of  character; 
they  have  no  adaptability  to  fit  themselves  to  the 
conditions  in  which  they  work.  They  cannot  recog- 
nize the  differences  in  the  individual  characteristics 
of  their  pupils  and  in  that  way  seize  the  opportunity 
to  develop  their  pupils  as  they  ought.  Now,  why  do 
we  have  teachers  of  that  kind  .?  Simply  because  we 
are  unwilling  to  pay  more.  Often  the  difl^erence  of 
ten  dollars  a  month  would  make  all  of  the  difi^erence 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  109 

between  an  unskilled,  ignorant,  incompetent  teacher 
and  a  thoroughly-trained  one  who  could  put  into  the 
pupils  the  social  and  faithful  spirit  needed.  But 
there  is  also  another  side  to  the  question:  I  say  that 
we  ought  to  have  our  children  fitted  for  industrial 
life,  because  we  all  live  in  our  business  first,  and  we 
live  in  these  higher  interests  afterwards.  Nine  out 
of  ten  of  our  waking  thoughts  are  given  to  business; 
the  other  is  given  to  these  higher  things  that  we  set 
before  us  as  our  ideals.  That  is  going  to  be  true  with 
our  children  just  as  much  as  it  is  with  us,  and  under 
those  circumstances  we  ought  to  see  to  it  that  they 
get  business  training,  industrial  training,  in  the 
highest  and  best  way.  Now,  who  are  the  people  that 
we  appoint  to  train  our  children  in  business  ?  As 
a  rule,  unmarried  women  who  have  had  practically 
no  experience  in  business.  Now,  to  avoid  misunder- 
standing, I  should  like  to  say  that  the  best  teachers 
that  I  know  are  women;  I  should  like  to  say  that  I 
think  women,  as  a  rule,  are  as  able  and  as  good  and 
as  skillful  teachers  as  the  men  are.  But  I  still  con- 
tend that,  if  we  are  going  to  give  our  children  an 
all-around  business  training,  if  we  are  to  give  them 
the  right  idea  of  business  life,  if  we  are  going  to  start 
our  schools  on  the  basis  of  our  daily  life  and  work 
outward,  we  should  have  our  schools  something  like 
the  life  outside  the  school  room.  Outside  our  workers 
are  half  men  and  half  women,  speaking  roundly;  in 
our  schools  let  us  have  the  same  proportion.  Let  us 
have  the  best  women  kept;  we  certainly  could  not  do 


/ 


110  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

better;  let  the  places  of  the  others  be  taken  by  men 
as  skillful  as  the  best  women  whom  we  keep.  This 
plan  will  cost  a  great  deal  more  money,  but  it  will 
be  bringing  our  schools  much  closer  to  the  kind  of 
life  that  we  want  to  train  our  children  for.  The 
reason  why,  in  my  judgment,  to  a  considerable 
extent  our  schools  have  failed  in  practical  training, 
is  because  we  have  been  unwilling  to  pay  to  keep  men 
in  the  public  schools.  That  is  why  the  women  are 
there;  we  can  get  them  cheaper. 

Just  a  few  words  in  conclusion.  We  can  make  great 
changes  in  our  public  schools  and  in  the  influence  of 
our  public  schools  upon  our  children's  lives;  but  we 
cannot  hope  to  accomplish  very  much  at  once.  In 
the  first  place,  we  must  find  our  teachers,  we  must 
train  them;  in  the  second  place,  we  must  convince 
our  people  that  our  plan  is  the  right  one;  in  the  third 
place,  we  must  work  out  any  problem  of  that  kind 
through  a  series  of  experiments.  It  will  take  time, 
but  the  essential  idea  is  right  and  the  problem  must 
be  worked  out  in  that  way.  So,  after  a  time,  we 
shall  be  able  to  make  very  great  improvements. 

In  the  next  place,  we  must  not  think  that  we  can 
accomplish  too  much.  The  schools  can  do  a  great 
deal,  but  the  schools  cannot  furnish  brains;  and  it  is 
of  course  true  that  very  many  people  are  not  people 
of  great  intellectual  ability.  Nevertheless,  it  is  true 
that  everyone  can  be  improved,  and  that  our  educa- 
tional and  social  conditions  may  be  made  vastly 
better  than  they  are  now,  by  careful  training  from  the 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  m 

beginning,  although  we  cannot  hope  for  too  great 
results. 

I  was  reading  last  evening  a  brief  statement  made 
by  Booker  T.  Washington,  with  reference  to  his 
school  at  Tuskegee,  his  school  for  the  negroes.  In 
my  judgment  no  other  man  in  the  United  States 
today  is  doing  so  great  a  work  in  education,  speaking 
generally,  as  is  Booker  Washington.  In  closing  his 
autobiographical  sketch  that  he  has  been  writing  for 
The  Outlook,  he  gave  the  aims  of  his  Institute,  and 
told  what  he  is  trying  to  do  for  the  young  men  and 
young  women  who  study  at  Tuskegee.  *Tn  the  first 
place,'*  he  said  (I  am  not  quoting  his  words  literally), 
"We  try  to  teach  our  pupils  to  take  the  problems  of 
life  that  they  meet  now,  and  to  solve  them;  we  wish 
them  to  learn  to  do  the  world's  work  as  it  comes  to 
them,  now;  in  the  second  place,  we  try  to  teach  every 
one  of  them  to  learn  how,  by  means  of  his  knowledge 
and  his  character,  to  support  himself  and  others;  and 
in  the  third  place,  we  try  to  make  every  one  of  them 
feel  that  work  is  something  that  is  noble  and  beauti- 
ful, and  we  try  to  instil  into  each  of  them  a  love  of 
work  and  not  a  desire  to  avoid  it."  Those  were  the 
three  things  that  that  Institute  is  trying  to  do  and 
the  result  of  them  has  been  this:  that  most  of  the 
pupils  who  left  there,  he  said,  had  shown  that  they 
had  common  sense  and  self-control.  So  far  as  I  can 
see,  that  Tuskegee  Institute  is  taking  up  this  educa- 
tional problem  in  the  way  that  I  have  had  in  mind 
this  evening.     Mr.  Washington  is  taking  the  life    of 


112  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

today  as  he  finds  it  in  the  South,  and  he  is  fitting  his 
pupils  for  it  by  direct  industrial  training,  as  the 
central  thought,  with  all  of  the  other  culture  influ- 
ences possible  brought  in  to  support  that,  to  aid  it 
and  carry  it  out,  and  he  is  bringing  into  their  minds 
the  idea  of  the  social  relationships  that  exist  between 
the  diffierent  people  in  the  South,  whites  and  blacks 
alike,  and  he  makes  them  feel  that  they  are  all  one 
great  society. 

When,  later  on,  we  can  get  into  our  public  schools 
all  our  children  and  can  give  them  all  a  sense  of  the 
need  for  helpfulness,  a  desire  to  serve  others,  in  the 
first  place;  and  then  can  make  them  feel  also  that 
they  have  the  capabilities  for  self  direction,  we,  I 
think,  shall  have  gone  a  long  way  toward  preparing 
our  pupils  for  the  greater  state  that  we  all  of  us  wish 
to  see,  which  shall  exist  for  truth  and  righteousness. 


After  remarks  by  Messrs.  Richardson,  Lovell 
Fosdick,  Bugby,  Pincott,  Ransom,  Laughlin,  Dusch- 
ack,  Mann,  Leach  and  Fenton,  Professor  Jenks  closed 
the  discussion  as  follows: 

In  listening  to  this  discussion  it  has  been  a  matter 
of  great  comfort  to  me  that  the  thought  happened  to 
occur  to  me  at  the  outset  to  state  my  political  creed. 
I  knew  that  I  was  going  to  take  up  a  subject  that  had 
to  do  with  the  sordid  affairs  of  life,  so  it  seemed  worth 
while  to  say  to  begin  with  that  I  believed  that  "the 
only  measure  of  a  nation's  true  success" — in  the 
words  of  Mr.  Lowell — ''was  the  amount  that  it  had 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  II3 

contributed,"  not  merely  "to  the  knowledge"  but 
also  "to  the  moral  energy,  the  intellectual  happiness 
and  the  spiritual  hope  and  consolation  of  mankind." 
That  is  my  creed.  Now,  in  connection  with  that, 
I  should  like  also  to  say  that  I  believe  that  those 
highest  ideals  can  in  many  ways  be  best  attained 
through  training  for  business  life.  I  think  that  Booker 
Washington  w^as  right  when  he  put  forward  as  one 
of  the  ideals  of  his  school,  to  teach  every  one  of  his 
pupils  to  be  able  to  make  a  living  for  himself  and  for 
others.  I  do  not  think  that  we  can  do  our  duty  by 
our  fellow-citizens  unless  we  can  earn  our  own  living 
honestly.  I  think  that  the  chief  purpose  why  we 
should  want  to  earn  our  living  honestly,  is  in  order 
that  we  may  render  service  to  others. 

So,  also  with  reference  to  the  suggestion  that  was 
made  as  to  my  putting  business  first  and  ideals  after- 
ward, by  two  of  the  gentlemen  here, — a  word  further. 
I  believe  that  the  problem  of  the  public  schools  is 
very  largely  the  same  problem  that  the  newspapers 
have.  It  is  very  difficult  indeed  to  convert  the  world 
to  high  ideals  through  a  newspaper  unless  you  can 
make,  in  some  way  or  other,  your  newspaper  read- 
able enough  so  that  at  least  part  of  the  world  will 
take  it.  Likewise  in  the  public  schools.  You  will 
remember  that  I  had  put  forward  as  one  of  the  first 
problems,  that  of  making  the  schools  attractive  in 
order  that  we  might  get  the  pupils  and  hold  them; 
then  we  could  give  them  the  higher  ideals.  We  can 
hold  them,  not  by  lowering  our  ideals,  necessarily, — 


114  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

not  at  all;  but  by  meeting  their  ideals  first,  and  getting 
hold  of  them  thereby;  when  we  get  them  into  our 
charge,  then  we  can  put  forward  these  higher  ideals 
that  we  have  spoken  of. 

The  first  duty  of  the  schools,  as  was  well  said  by 
the  gentleman  sitting  at  the  farther  table,  is  to  train 
the  pupils  so  as  to  get  the  best  that  we  can  out  of 
them;  to  aid  them  to  develop  their  own  powers  to  the 
best  degree  possible;  but  I  think  we  must  do  that  for 
the  sake  of  society  as  a  whole.  That  comes  into  the 
development  of  character  itself.  I  am,  however, 
inclined  to  think  that  we  should  differ  somewhat  as 
to  method.  I  believe  that  it  is  not  necessary,  in  order 
to  develop  the  powers  of  our  pupils  best,  to  give  them 
any  specific  line  of  training,  at  least  that  line  which 
we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  giving  during  the  earlier 
years.  I  believe  that  we  can  develop  intellectual 
qualities  and  moral  qualities  just  as  well  in  a  technical 
school  as  we  can  in  a  Latin  school.  So  it  seems  to  me 
that  after  all  I  may  very  fitly  and  properly  come  back 
to  the  key-note  of  what  I  tried  to  say,  and  put  it  in 
this  way:  We  should  make  our  schools  take  hold  on 
life  and  take  hold  on  life  as  it  is.  Now,  first,  we  do 
have  to  make  our  living.  There  is  no  doubt  about 
that.  The  larger  part  of  our  time  is  to  be  given  to 
getting  a  living.  We  have  all  of  us  various  desires  to 
satisfy,  but  first  we  must  satisfy  our  desire  to  eat. 
If  we  do  not,  we  shall  soon  not  be  in  a  condition  to 
have  any  further  desires  in  this  wor'd.  I  do  not 
think  that  we  should  make  getting  a  living  the  final 


PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  AND  BUSINESS  LIFE  115 

purpose  by  any  means,  but  that  Is  one  prominent 
thing  that  should  be  brought  forward.  So,  further, 
with  reference  to  this  crowd  of  misfit  men  that  we  are 
trying  to  get  hold  of — how  shall  we  get  rid  of  them 
best  in  society  ?  Is  it  not  by  holding  them  as  children 
longer  in  our  schools  ?  Is  it  not  by  so  adapting  our 
schools  to  social  life  as  it  is  among  us,  that  they 
will  realize  the  interdependence  of  each  person  in 
society  upon  others  ?  How  are  we  ever  going  to  get 
our  different  classes  in  society  in  unison  and  harmony 
and  working  together  unless  we  train  all  of  our  citi- 
zens so  that  they  will  recognize  what  these  social  con- 
ditions are  ?  We  speak  frequently  of  the  lack  of 
harmony  that  exists  between  the  different  classes  in 
society.  We  all  recognize  that  this  strife  exists  in 
many  cases.  How  shall  we  get  rid  of  it  ?  Is  it  not 
by  taking  the  children  when  they  are  young,  putting 
them  into  the  schools,  and  letting  them  realize  there 
what  the  different  conditions  in  life  are,  what  inter- 
dependence there  is  between  the  different  classes  in 
society,  until  they  can  meet  one  another  on  an  even 
plane  ?  A  man  is  no  better  because  he  is  rich,  but 
neither  is  he  any  better  because  he  is  poor,  as  a  great 
many  people  seem  to  think.  The  fact  is  that  a  per- 
son's goodness  or  badness  depends  upon  what  he  does, 
upon  his  ideals,  upon  the  use  that  he  makes  of  the 
powers  that  God  has  given  him.  Now,  the  essential 
thought  of  this  address  may  be  summed  up  in  this: 
I  believe  that  our  schools  do  exist — and  I  will  put 
that  forward  as  the  only  aim  of  our  schools,  if  you 


116  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

please, — to  put  each  person,  each  child,  into  a  condi- 
tion so  that  he  can  best  use,  for  the  good  of  society, 
for  the  good  of  all  that  are  around  about  him,  the 
powers  that  God  has  given  him.  They  must  be 
developed  in  him.  He  must  by  the  development  of 
his  character  and  by  understanding  the  nature  of 
society,  know  how  to  use  those  powers  for  the  sake 
of  his  fellow  men. 


I 


jpourtb  2)lnner, 

a>arcb  10.  tdOt. 

THE    RELATIONS    OF   THE   UNITED    STATES   TO 
THE    ORIENT. 

HIS  EXCELLENCY    WU  TING  FANG, 

Chinese  Minister  to  the  United  States. 

Mr.  President — and  I  must  follow  the  president's 
example  in  taking  official  notice  of  the  fair  sex  who 
are  here  to-night,  although  they  do  not  join  us  at  our 
table, 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen — I  am  extremely  grate- 
ful to  the  President  for  his  complimentary  remarks 
made  concerning  me.  I  remember,  and  I  always  con- 
sidered until  now,  that  the  highest  compliment  ever 
paid  to  me  was  that  one  day,  many  years  ago,  I 
won't  say  now — I  was  taken  to  be  a  lady.  That  was 
the  highest  compliment  I  consider  that  could  be  paid 
me.  (Laughter).  The  flattering  remarks  made  by 
the  President  just  now  I  consider  are  only  secondary 
to  that  compliment.     (Laughter.) 

But,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  feel  that  I  shall 
disappoint  you  in  one  respect;  on  account  of  my 
onerous  duties  at  Washington,  of  the  busy  life  I  am 
leading,  I  have  not  been  able  to  prepare  what  I  am 
going  to  say  to-night  with  such  care  as  I  should  wish. 


118  THE  LIBERAL  CLtlB 

So,  therefore,  I  ask  the  indulgence  of  the  audience  for 
the  cursory  remarks  that  I  shall  make,  and  I  now 
would  proceed  to  say  what  I  think  would  be  appro- 
priate to  the  occasion.  First  of  all,  let  me  say  this: 
That  the  invitation  of  this  club  was  extended  to  me 
by  the  energetic  chairman,  I  think,  Mr.  Elmendorf, 
who  I  am  sorry  is  not  here  to-night,  and  backed  by 
some  influential  gentlemen,  and  I  accepted  condi- 
tionally. But  I  must  also  say  this:  I  must  repudiate 
the  idea  that  I  accepted  this  inviation  in  the  hope  of 
coming  a  Wu-ing  the  ladies.     (Laughter). 

No,  it  is  the  other  way.  One  of  the  eminent  mem- 
bers of  this  club  came  to  me,  and  in  order  to  support 
and  to  induce  me  to  fix  a  day,  he  strengthened  his 
application  by  mentioning  the  Twentieth  Century 
Club,  of  which  he  told  me  his  good  wife  and  many 
other  eminent  women  and  beautiful  women  were 
members.  So  you  see  that  I  was  captured  by  this  club 
with  the  assistance  of  the  Twentieth  Century  Club. 

Now,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  you  expect  me  to  talk 
about  the  relations  between  the  Orient  and  the 
United  States.  Fifteen  centuries  ago  there  was  a 
fisherman  who  in  his  small  boat  was  going  up  a  stream. 
He  was  charmed  with  the  scenery,  full  of  peach  trees 
on  both  sides  of  the  stream,  and  he  pulled  as  far  as  he 
could,  forgetting  time  and  distance.  Suddenly  he 
came  to  a  stop  at  the  top  of  the  stream,  but  he  was  so 
fascinated  with  the  beautiful  scenery  that  he  left  his 
boat  behind  and  proceeded  on  his  journey  along  the 
pathway.     He  went  on.    At  last  he  came  to  the  foot  of 


UNITED  STATES  AND  THE  ORIENT  II9 

the  mountain.  There  he  saw  a  hole,  a  gap  large  enough 
to  admit  of  a  person.  Then  he  stooped  down  and 
crawled  into  the  hole.  Then,  after  crawling  some 
distance,  he  came  to  the  other  side  of  the  mountain. 
There  he  saw  another  scene  quite  different  from  what 
he  was  used  to,  full  of,  in  fact,  human  beings,  with 
children,  dogs,  chickens,  and  he  was  surprised  to  see 
this  community  in  the  heart  of  the  mountain.  He 
was  surrounded  by  the  people  of  this  recluse  com- 
munity and  he  had  a  talk  with  them,  and  after  long 
conversation  he  found  that  this  mountain  community 
had  been  living  there  for  over  500  years,  excluded 
from  the  outside  world,  where  many  dynastic  changes 
had  taken  place,  and  they  did  not  know  what  was 
going  on  outside  in  the  world. 

Now,  China  is  in  some  respects  like  this  recluse 
community  in  a  miniature.  China,  up  to  60  or  70 
years  ago,  had  been  practically  secluded  and  shut 
out  from  the  outer  world  and  during  that  time  and  for 
40  more  centuries  she  existed,  but  during  that  long 
period  China  did  not  remain  idle.  She  developed 
herself  in  her  own  way.  You  may  say  peculiar  way, 
but,  nevertheless,  she  did  progress  and  she  did  invent 
many  things.  Yes,  fifteen  or  sixteen  centuries  before 
the  Christian  era  the  compass  was  invented  and  was 
used  in  journeys.  The  inventor  of  the  compass  was 
the  Duke  of  Chow,  and  we  call  it  the  southern  needle. 
Of  course,  your  compass  points  to  the  north,  but  ac- 
cording to  our  view  the  compass  points  to  the  south, 
and  hence  all  our  compasses  point  to  the  south,  but 


120  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

it  has  the  same  effect  as  yours,  because  the  opposite 
of  the  compass  points  to  the  north.  So  you  may  say 
it  is  peculiar,  but  still  it  has  the  same  effect  and  the 
same  use;  it  guides;  it  is  the  instrument  invented  by 
our  people,  many  centuries  before  the  Christian 
era,  for  navigation,  for  long  journeys. 

Then,  printing  was  invented.  Of  course,  litera- 
ture— characters — v^as  in  vogue,  and  many  other 
things,  according  to  our  authentic  history,  v^e  had 
invented  and  v^ere  in  use.  Then  in  regard  to  trade, 
practically  we  had  no  foreign  trade  in  a  modern  sense 
of  the  word,  but,  nevertheless,  we  had  some  trade. 
That  is,  traders  and  merchants  and  travelers  coming 
from  the  bordering  nations  and  other  nations  in  Asia; 
Arabians,  Persians,  Venetians,  travelers  used  to  come 
to  China  and  trade  with  us,  used  to  bring  perfumes 
and  spices  to  China,  and  they  took  back  to  their 
country  silks,  our  famous  silks  and  teas.  And  in 
regard  to  tea,  we  know  how  we  make  it  and  your 
people  of  some  nations  have  now  learned  from  us  how 
to  grow  tea  and  they  say  that  their  tea  is  not  inferior 
to  ours.  But,  however,  that  is  a  matter  of  opinion. 
But  I  may  say  this :  They  may  grow  good  tea,  but  they 
do  not  know  how  to  make  good  tea.  What  is  the  use 
of  having  good  tea  if  you  do  not  know  how  to  make 
proper  use  of  it .?  Here  in  this  country  and  in  other 
countries,  when  you  drink  tea  you  put  in  something 
else  to  spoil  the  good  taste  of  the  tea;  youputin  cream, 
sugar  and,  worst  of  all,  lemon.  I  am  afraid  the  ladies 
here  won't  agree  with  me,  but,  however,  I  am  telling 


UNITED  STATES  AND  THE  ORIENT  121 

what  is  my  honest  opinion.     Of  course,  they  have 
different  taste  from  ours,  but  there  it  is. 

We  have  many  things,  many  good  things,  in  China, 
although  during  those  centuries,  40  centuries,  we  had 
practically  no  foreign  commerce  or  no  foreign  inter- 
course with  outer  worlds.  Then,  in  regard  to  mor- 
ality and  other  things.  We  have  our  morals.  Of 
course,  our  morality  may  in  some  respects  differ  from 
yours,  but  nevertheless  it  is  a  morality  and  we  are 
accustomed  to  it.  And  one  of  the  things  which  we 
look  upon  as  most  important  to  our  civilization  and  to 
our  national  life  is  filial  piety.  What  is  filial  piety  ? 
I  say  filial  piety  is  the  thing  upon  which  our  civiliza- 
tion is  based,  upon  which  China  is  modeled,  upon 
which  the  government  is  founded.  Let  me  illustrate 
what  I  mean.  Well,  this  rule,  this  principle,  of  piety 
is  an  ancient  one,  coming  down  from  the  most  ancient 
sages  in  China,  Yao  and  Shun,  who  flourished  23  or 
24  centuries  before  the  Christian  era.  And  then  after- 
ward it  is  enforced  and  elaborated  bylater  sages,  such 
as  Confucius  and  Mencius. 
.  This  filial  duty,  in  a  word,  is  the  duty  of  juniors 
to  superiors.  That  is  to  say,  the  subjects,  the  duty 
which  the  ministers  of  the  state  owe  to  the  sovereign 
and  the  duty  which  children  owe  to  the  parents  and 
that  the  younger  people  owe  to  the  superior.  Just 
to  illustrate  what  I  mean,  take  the  case  of  parent  and 
child — say  parent  and  son.  Well,  the  son  having 
been  brought  up  and  educated  at  the  expense  of  the 
parents,  he  is  bound  to  show  reverence  to  his  parents; 


122  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

he  is  bound  to  obey  them;  he  is  bound  to  support 
them;  he  is  bound  to  love  them  and  to  respect  them. 
Now,  when  a  son  does  this,  he  is  called  a  dutiful  son, 
a  filial  son;  but  if  he  should  be  disobedient,  if  he 
does  not  support  his  parents, then  he  is  disobedient,an 
undutiful  son.  In  such  a  case,  if  brought  to  the  notice 
of  the  court  in  China,  the  undutiful  son  will  be  pun- 
ished. But  when  a  son  is  dutiful  to  the  parent  he 
necessarily  must  be  a  good  member  of  the  community 
and  if  he  should  become  an  official  he  would  be  loyal 
to  the  empire  and  patriotic  to  the  nation,  and  when  he 
is  dutiful  to  the  parent  he  would  be  good  to  his  friends 
and  he  would  be  good  to  his  own  children.  So,  there- 
fore, this  is  the  foundation  of  our  creed.  Of  course,  I 
am  aware  that  in  this  country  you  have  different 
morality;  you  are  differently  brought  up  and,  in  your 
own  ways,  you  strike  a  different  road,  but,  neverthe- 
less, we  have  been  accustomed  to  traveling  this  road 
and  we  consider  it  is  a  good  road  for  us.  (Applause). 
Well,  such  is  China,  but  within  the  last  several 
decades,  or  60  or  70  years  ago,  her  door  was  practically 
forced  open  and  she  had  to  admit  foreigners  from  all 
nations  to  come  within  her  gates  for  the  purpose  of 
trade  and  for  other  purposes.  In  these  days  of  inter- 
national intercourse  between  one  nation  and  another, 
and  in  view  of  the  world  becoming  smaller,  of  course 
China  could  not  forever  remain  in  her  secluded  posi- 
tion, but  when  her  door  was  forced  open  to  trade  with 
foreigners,  it  was  very  unfortunate  that  the  proper 
course  was  not  taken.     I  say  this  not  to  blame  any  one 


UNITED  STATES  AND  THE  ORIENT  123 

or  any  nation,  but,  nevertheless,  it  was  an  unfortunate 
way  of  doing.  Of  course,  one  reason  was  Western 
nations  did  not  know  our  language,  our  customs,  our 
manners;  did  not  know  our  thoughts  and  they  did 
things  from  their  own  viewpoint.  They  thought  they 
knew  what  was  right  and  they  did  it.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  our  people  think  in  a  different  way  and 
we  thought  that  the  way  that  the  foreigners  adopted 
in  forcing  open  the  door  of  China  to  trade  was  not 
the  proper  way  and  hence  this  clash  and  collision. 
This  is  due  more  to  misunderstanding  than  any  other 
cause. 

The  foreign  nations  wanted  to  trade  with  China 
and  they  thought  by  forcing  her  to  trade  they  would 
be  doing  good  not  only  to  themselves,  but  for  the  in- 
terests of  China.  That  is  the  way  they  looked  at  it. 
But  the  Chinese  did  not  think  in  that  way  and  hence 
there  was  the  misunderstanding,  and  the  consequence 
was,  if  you  refer  to  recent  histories  of  foreign  inter- 
course with  China  within  the  last  50  years,  wars  have 
happened  between  several  nations  and  China,  all 
these  through  misunderstanding  more  than  to  any 
evil  motive,  and  then  it  was  aggravated  by  the  trade 
in  opium.  Opium  was  imported  into  China  at  first 
against  the  wishes  of  the  Government  and  the  people, 
and  hence  we  know  how  we  had  that  war  which  is 
popularly  known  as  the  opium  war.  These  and 
many  other  wars,  another  war,  and  other  things  that 
occurred  have  aggravated  the  situation,  and,  as  I 
have  just  said,  all  this  was  due  from  misunderstanding 


124  THt:  LIBERAL  CLVB 

on  the  part  of  the  different  nations  and  not  the  Chi- 
nese people. 

But  now  let  bygones  be  bygones.  I  do  not  want 
to  refer  to  the  past  events,  because  what  has  happened 
cannot  be  undone,  but  let  us  look  to  the  present  time 
and  to  the  future.  What  shall  we  do  to  improve  our 
relations,  the  present  and  the  future  relations  between 
China  and  this  great  country  and  the  other  nations  ? 
But  here  I  would  say,  and  it  is  with  pleasure  that  I 
note  that  during  the  last  50  years  the  conduct  of  the 
American  people  of  the  American  Government  toward 
China  has  been  always  friendly,  cordial,  and  we 
Chinese  understand  it  and  we  reciprocate  the  friendly 
feeling.     (Applause). 

During  those  50  or  60  years  of  foreign  intercourse 
wars  have  been  waged  against  China,  but  not  by 
your  country  against  China,  and  local  difficulties 
between  American  merchants  and  some  officials  may 
have  happened,  but  all  these  have  been  settled  with- 
out resort  to  war. 

And  another  thing  I  wish  to  say  is  that  the  Amer- 
ican Nation  is  the  only  nation  which,  by  solemn  treaty 
with  China,  has  consented  to  prohibit  the  American 
people  importing  opium  into  China,  and  our  govern- 
ment, on  the  other  hand,  has  consented  to  prohibit 
the  Chinese  people  from  importing  opium  into  this 
country,  because  we  know  that  both  nations  know 
that  opium  is  a  pernicious  drug  and  it  ought  to  be  pro- 
hibited; and  of  all  foreign  countries,  to  my  own  knowl- 
edge, the  United  States  is  the  only  country  that  has 


UNITED  STATES  AND  THE  ORIENT  125 

entered  into  that  treaty  with  that  stipulation  with 
China.     (Applause). 

Well,  as  I  have  just  said,  now  we  must  look  to 
the  present.  Your  Nation  is  great,  but  with  your 
large  manufactories,  your  large  undertakings,  you 
know  that  your  produce  is  greater  than  the  con- 
sumption of  this  country  and  there  is  surplus  of 
goods  to  be  exported.  Of  course,  your  export  to 
other  countries  is  very  great,  but,  there  is  a  large 
market  for  you  in  the  East  and  in  China.  China  is 
now  open  to  the  world.  Her  natural  resources,  as  it 
is  well  known,  are  great.  We  shall  have  to  construct 
railways.  Her  territory  is  just  as  great  as  this  coun- 
try and  railways  must  be  constructed  in  China,  and 
when  that  is  done  she  will  want  railway  materials 
and  many  other  things  from  this  country.  Then  her 
mines  must  be  opened  and  developed.  When  that 
day  comes  she  will  have  to  look  to  this  and  other  na- 
tions for  machinery  and  other  implements  and  for  men 
to  help  her,  to  help  her  in  developing  her  resources. 
And  then  we  Chinese  are  known  to  be  good  trades- 
men. 

When  our  nation  is  fully  developed  you  will  find 
that  our  people  are  a  nation  of  shopkeepers.  We 
want  to  trade — just  the  same  as  you  are.  In  that 
case  we  want  your  merchandise,  just  the  same  as  you 
want  our  produce.  We  want  many  things  that  are 
needed  in  our  country,  and  where  shall  we  go  .?  We 
must  go  to  those  countries  that  can  supply  us.  Take 
the  case  of  flour,  wheat  flour.     The  export  of  flour  to 


126  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

China,  to  the  north  of  China,  has  been  increasing 
within  the  last  few  years  at  a  tremendous  rate.  I  am 
not  able  at  this  moment  to  tell  you  the  figure,  but  it 
is  increasing  every  year.  On  account  of  the  constant 
famine  with  which  wx  are  afflicted  we  must  buy  flour 
from  your  country.  And  then  the  kerosene  oil.  To 
my  knowledge,  kerosene  oil  is  used  everywhere  in 
China.  I  have  seen  it  used  in  the  interior  of  China, 
bearing  the  mark  of  an  American  firm.  This  is  a 
new  trade,  but  it  shows  you  clearly  what  a  large  mar- 
ket it  is  for  your  exports.  Well,  gentlemen,  China 
being  a  great  market  for  your  production,  it  is  for 
your  people,  who  are  known  to  be  so  enterprising  and 
active  to  turn  to  that  direction. 

Well,  in  going  to  China  to  trade,  permit  me  to  give 
you  one  or  two  points.  When  you  go  to  China  to 
trade,  if  you  want  to  succeed,  first  of  all  you  must 
remember  that  when  you  are  in  China  you  must  not 
think  that  you  are  doing  your  business  as  if  you  were 
in  Buffalo  or  in  New  York.  You  have  to  study  the 
people.  You  have,  to  a  certain  extent,  to  accommo- 
date them.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  you  should  risk 
your  capital  to  please  them.  You  know  the  Chinese 
merchant,  generally  speaking,  is  proverbially  hon- 
est; they  do  not  cheat  you;  those  people  who  have 
been  to  China  can  bear  out  what  I  say,  that  the 
Chinese  merchants,  in  dealing  with  foreigners,  are 
exceptionally  honest.  Cases  have  occurred  where, 
without  any  written  documents  to  show  a  binding 
contract,  yet   having  promised  by  word  of  mouth  to 


UNITED  STATES  AND  THE  ORIENT  127 

purchase  certain  goods,  when  the  time  came,  although 
the  price  of  the  goods  lowered  in  value,  they  still  ful- 
filled their  verbal  agreement.  Well,  as  I  said,  with 
that  being  the  case,  here  you  have  the  honest  people 
to  deal  with.  Therefore,  when  you  go  there  you 
have  to  know  a  little  of  their  manners  and  customs. 
I  do  not  wish  to  name  the  people  of  any  particular 
country,  but  within  my  limited  experience,  although 
I  am  not  a  merchant,  I  have  seen  many  things  occur 
in  the  way  the  Chinese  merchants  have  been  treated 
by  foreigners  when  they  came  to  their  store  or  to 
their  house  to  buy  goods.  I  have  seen  and  have 
known  many  cases  where  they  complained.  A 
Chinese  merchant  goes  to  a  foreign  house  to  buy 
some  goods.  The  foreign  merchant,  instead  of  treat- 
ing his  customer  in  a  polite  way,  says,  "What  do  you 
want?"  and  then  the  Chinaman  says,  "I  want  so 
and-so."  Well,  then  he  looks  at  the  book  and  names 
the  price.  Of  course,  the  Chinese  merchant  will  say 
**0!" — want  to  offer  a  price  which  he  thought  was 
reasonable.  Then  the  foreign  merchant  will  say 
"Well,  no.  This  is  the  price.  If  not — maskee 
(can  go.)"  That  was  the  way.  That  was  the  way 
it  has  been  done  in  many  cases.  But  there  are  per- 
sons of  some  nations, — of  one  particular  nation  I  have 
in  mind — who  know  how  to  deal  with  the  Chinese. 
When  they  saw  that  was  not  the  proper  way  to  deal 
with  the  Chinese  and  those  foreigners  lost  their  cus- 
tomers, this  nation's  people  adopted  the  more  con- 
ciliatory way. 


128  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

And  do  you  know  what  this  people  do  and  they 
are  doing  ?  They  do  this :  When  a  Chinese  merchant 
comes  to  his  office,  first  of  all,  "How  do  you  do? 
Sit  down" — offer  him  a  cigar  and  then,  if  he  is  a  good 
customer,  oflfer  him  a  glass  of  champagne.  That  is 
the  way.  And  then,  you  know,  every  foreigner  has 
got  a  Chinese  compradore — we  call  it  compradore — 
that  is,  the  Chinese  manager,  and  then  every  year  he 
asks  the  Chinese  compradore  to  give  a  grand  feast  to 
entertain  the  Chinese  customers  who  have  been  doing 
business  during  the  year;  and  in  addition  to  that, 
many  of  this  class  of  people,  they  go  to  the  Chinese 
customer.  And  another  thing,  they  are  contented 
with  reasonable  profits,  and  hence  this  class  of  mer- 
chants, foreign  merchants,  I  mean,  have  increased 
year  by  year  and  you  find  in  China  the  stores,  the 
firms  of  this  nation  have  increased  every  year,  while 
many  other  firms  of  other  nations  have  decreased. 
Well,  this  shows  that  a  little  civility  on  the  part  of  the 
foreign  merchant  will  go  a  long  way  to  secure  custom, 
because  our  people,  our  merchants,  when  they  find  a 
good  man  to  deal  with,  they  will  always  go  to  him 
and  stick  to  him;  they  won't  change;  they  are  good 
friends  to  deal  with;  but  it  is  not  so  with  every  nation; 
if  you  treat  them  properly  they  will  always  remember 
you. 

Well,  gentlemen,  I  won't  keep  you  any  longer.  The 
members  of  this  club,  most  of  them,  I  should  think, 
are  merchants,  in  business,  and  want  to  trade,  to 
expand  your  trade,  because  it  is  human  nature.     Man 


UNITED  STATES  AND  THE  ORIENT  129 

is  never  contented.  The  more  business  you  have 
the  better,  therefore,  if  you  should  ever  go  to  China  or 
extend  your  commerce  with  Chinese,  depend  upon  it, 
a  little  courtesy  and  civility  on  your  part  v^ill  go  a  long 
way.  And  then  you,  in  dealing  with  Chinese,  need 
not  stick  to  the  strict  formality  which  you  observe 
in  this  country,  because  with  our  people  word  of 
mouth  is  just  as  good  as  a  bond,  and  when  you  find  a 
good  customer,  you  can  trust  him  on  his  word. 

Gentlemen,  I  know  your  people  are  intelligent; 
it  is  only  necessary  just  to  give  you  a  hint  and  you 
understand  what  is  necessary  for  your  interests  and 
with  your  prestige  and  your  friendly  feelings  tow^ard 
China,  and  your  good  name,  which  is  known  in  China, 
I  am  sure  if  you  should  ever  extend  your  trade  to  the 
East,  you  will  find  many,  many  Chinese  would  trade 
with  you.  This  club  is  a  liberal  club  and  I  am  sure 
the  members  are  all  liberal.  Their  liberality  is  shown 
tonight  by  the  splendid  banquet  to  which  I  am  in- 
vited, and  also  by  inviting  the  ladies  to  be  present, 
although  the  ladies  are  not  members.  And  still, 
gentlemen,  I  wish  you  would  not  only  have  a  banquet 
here,  but  extend  your  operations  in  China. 

Gentlemen,  I  thank  you  for  the  kindness  of  in- 
viting me  and  I  wish  this  Liberal  Club  may  exist 
many,  many  years  to  come. 


fitib  Dinner. 

Bpril  15,  1901. 


y 


THE  TRUE   LIBERAL. 


REV.    THOMAS   R.    SLICER. 


I  am  in  the  habit  of  thinking  that  twice  in  my  life  I 
had  a  genuine  inspiration:  once  was  when  I  had  the 
sense  to  accept  the  inviation  to  come  to  Buffalo  as 
pastor  of  the  Church  of  Our  Father,  and  the  other 
was  that,  being  here,  I  had  it  suggested  to  me  that 
The  Liberal  Club  was  a  possibility.  The  idea  of  The 
Liberal  Club  was  of  course  not  original  with  any- 
body, because  since  Adam  and  Eve  were  driven  out  of 
Eden  people  have  been  getting  together  to  dine  and 
talk  it  all  over.  But  in  the  midst  of  that  "Liberal 
Club"  meeting,  the  first  meeting,  to  which  the  Presi- 
dent has  referred,  somebody  asked  me  what  I  wanted 
in  the  way  of  a  liberal  club  or  in  the  way  of  a  club 
at  all,  and  I  said  I  should  like  to  have  a  club  that 
would  not  only  dine  and  hear  good  talk,  but  a  club 
which  should  be  "in  thought  free,  in  temper  reverent 
and  in  method  scientific."  I  am  in  the  habit  of  think- 
ing that  that  motto  dropped  into  my  mind  out  of  high 
heaven,  for  it  certainly  was  not  premeditated,  and  I 
attribute  the  success  of  The  Liberal  Club  not  only  to 
its  constituency,  not  only  to  the  city  that  furnishes 
that  constituency,  not  only  to  the  fact  that  it  fitted  a 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL  131 

condition  to  which  the  organization  immediately 
appealed,  but  also  to  the  fact  that  the  motto  proved 
itself  a  sufficient  constitution,  and  the  peril  which 
many  clubs  have  encountered  and  upon  which  they 
have  gone  to  pieces  was  not  encountered  by  this  club, 
for  it  had  no  constitution,  no  by-laws.  It  simply 
enjoyed  good  health  without  a  constitution  and  had 
no  by-laws  to  amend.  So  that  the  motto  constituted 
a  sufficient  basis  of  union  and  served  the  very  good 
purpose  also  of  furnishing  a  test  of  the  way  in  which 
a  man  thought,  the  temper  in  which  he  did  his  think- 
ing and  the  method  by  which  he  thought;  that  is, 
whether  or  not  he  was  free  in  mind,  reverent  in  spirit 
and  scientific  in  the  attitude  of  his  mind  toward  all 
the  things  that  he  addressed.  So  that  if  a  man  wanted 
to  come  into  The  Liberal  Club  he  had  not  to  ask  who 
were  members;  he  had  only  to  feel  his  own  pulse  and 
know  whether  his  circulation  moved  freely;  he  had 
only  to  enter  into  the  sanctuaries  of  his  own  mind  to 
know  whether  he  there  had  reverences  that  he  treas- 
ured, and  he  only  had  to  look  into  the  world  about 
him,  of  thinking  men,  to  know  whether  his  thought 
moved  on  scientific  lines  in  accordance  with  mod- 
ern thought.  So  that  I  believe  nobody  who  wanted 
to  come  has  found  any  trouble  about  getting  in,  or 
of  staying  because  the  atmosphere  was  too  rare. 

I  have  been  most  happy  to  accept  the  invitation  of 
the  topic  committee  to  speak  at  this  tenth  anniver- 
sary, this  rounding-up  of  the  tenth  year  of  your  life, 
and  when  the  invitation  came  it  occurred  to  me  that 


132  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

as  I  had  felt  how  apt  the  address  of  Mr.  Sprague  was, 
at  the  close  of  the  second  or  third  year  I  think  it  was, 
of  your  life  as  a  club,  when  he  spoke  upon  Liberalism, 
I  might  dare,  with  your  added  experience  of  the  other 
seven  years,  to  take  the  same  subject,  with  that  rad- 
iant background  of  his  thought  and  with  the  sanc- 
tities that  attach  to  his  name,  with  the  beautiful 
exposition  of  the  true  Liberal  that  he  was  and  with 
the  confidence  of  the  club  in  that  name  inscribed 
again  at  the  head  of  its  official  list,  in  the  presence  of 
his  son*, — all  these  things  made  me  feel  that  I  might 
dare  to  address  myself  to  the  same  general  topic  and 
so  I  ask  you  to  consider  with  me  tonight  for  a  little 
while  "The  True  Liberal." 

Liberalism  is  perhaps  the  most  moveable  term  in 
the  history  of  human  thought.  The  reactionary 
you  cannot  well  place,  but  you  know  the  way  he  works. 
His  engine  reverses  more  easily  than  it  goes  ahead. 
The  reactionary  is  the  man  who  puts  the  brake  on 
going  up  hill,  who  knows  what  it  is  to  take  it  out  of 
the  horses;  he  is  not  content  to  get  on,  but  he  likes  to 
see  the  team  pull  and  so  he  puts  the  brake  on  going 
up  hill  and  he  and  the  horses  and  the  attraction  of 
gravitation  and  friction  have  it  all  out  together.  That 
is  the  reactionary,  and  he  is  the  opposite  of  the  lib- 
eral. The  conservative  is  not  the  opposite  of  the 
liberal.  The  antithesis  of  liberalism  is  not  conserva- 
tism,  for   the   true   liberal   is   a   conservative.     His 


♦Henry  Ware  Sprague  having  been  elected  President  at  this  meeting 
of  the  Club. 


THE   TRUE  LIBRERAL  I33 

business  is  construction.  And  certainly  no  better 
example  of  the  true  liberal  in  that  sense  could  be 
quoted  to  you  than  your  first  president  whose  address 
made  a  signal  impression  upon  my  mind,  as  it  did 
upon  yours,  for  Mr.  Sprague  illustrated  pre-eminently 
what  has  been  said  by  Holmes  of  Emerson,  that  "he 
/  was  an  iconoclast  without  a  hammer,  who  removed 
our  idols  from  their  pedestals  so  gently  that  it  seemed 
an  act  of  worship."  That  is  the  constructive  liberal- 
ism of  which  conservatism  is  an  element.  That  is 
not  the  reactionary,  however,  who  always  harks  back 
and  runs  over  his  anise  seed  track  with  just  as  much 
joy  as  though  there  was  a  real  live  fox  at  the  other 
end  of  the  trail. 
.  The  true  liberal  represents  not  a  set  of  opinions. 
They  are  never  the  same  in  any  age.  The  Roman 
Catholic  astronomer  of  one  age  belongs  to  the  same 
church  as  the  man  in  his  same  official  position  who  in 
another  age  condemned  Galileo.  The  most  con- 
serving influences  of  the  world  have  moveable  hori- 
zons; they  have  always  the  same  center;  but  it  is 
inevitable,  as  you  rise  in  the  scale  of  thought,  that 
your  heaven  comes  nearer  and  your  horizon  swings 
farther.  That  is  inevitable.  It  is  not  you  who  move 
away;  it  is  only  you  who  move  up,  and  one  ascent 
after  another  being  gained,  as  we  rise  to  higher  levels, 
we  get  new  views.  We  get  new  views.  The  age  in 
which  we  live  negatives  the  idea  that  liberalism  is  a 
set  of  opinions.  It  is  not  even  an  intellectual  state. 
The  true  liberal  is  endowed  with  a  certain  tempera- 


\ 


134  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

ment  dedicated  to  a  certain  office  and  pursuing  an 
unmistakable  end,  and  in  doing  this  he  means  to  see 
all  there  is  to  see,  and  to  weigh  all  that  is  to  come  to 
him  at  its  true  valuation,  and  he  is  entirely  ready  to 
have  his  mind  taken  by  its  corners,  as  you  would  take 
an  old  grain  bag,  and  shaken  of  every  kernel  that  it 
ever  contained,  in  order  that  the  shaken-out  grain 
may  go  to  some  mill  that  is  ready  to  make  grist  and 
turn  out  the  flour  which  shall  be  the  provision  of  a 
hunger  that  is  yet  to  be.  That  is  the  attitude  of  the 
liberal.  So  that  I  do  not  speak  of  a  set  of  opinions. 
The  only  use  that  I  see  in  a  church  is  that  it  is  a  way 
of  getting  things  done.  It  is  a  way  of  getting  things 
done.  I  do  not  stand  here  to  represent  a  liberal  church, 
but  a  liberal  temperament,  pursuing  its  ends  by 
methods  that  justify  themselves  by  results.  That 
liberalism  we  all  stand  for. 

Now,  let  me  mark  certain  peculiarities  of  the  true 
liberal  that  I  may  justify  this  thesis.  In  the  first 
place,  the  true  liberal  is  not  too  much  concerned 
about  his  own  freedom.  It  would  be  extremely 
difficult  to  have  any  child  born  into  a  free  state  other 
than  free.  And  there  is  much  of  our  condition  in 
life  that  we  take  for  granted.  There  are  some  things 
that  we  do  not  boast  of  nor  talk  about,  and  the  true 
liberal  is  not  concerned,  as  I  have  said,  about  his  own 
freedom  pre-eminently;  for  the  purpose  of  being  free 
is  not  for  the  sake  of  being  free.  That  is  incidental. 
The  horse  that  is  in  the  pasture,  unbroken  to  bridle 
or  harness,  is  absolutely  free  and  absolutely  of  no 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL  135 

account,  except  in  the  prospect  of  his  being  broken  to 
harness.  His  flowing  mane  and  tail  and  sleeky  sides 
and  play  of  muscles  under  the  skin  are  all  interesting 
to  the  looker-on,  but  perilous  to  anyone  who  wants 
to  put  him  to  service.  Now,  the  man  who  is  inter- 
ested in  his  own  freedom  simply  is  the  unbroken 
horse,  and  beside  that  careering  creature  out  there 
in  the  pasture,  tail  and  mane  in  the  wind,  showing 
his  best  paces  over  the  sod  and  glad  that  he  is  alive, — 
beside  him  in  his  uselessness,  unbroken,  the  veriest 
old  cab-horse,  driven  by  a  night-hawk  in  New  York 
City  is  doing  the  world's  work  better  because  he  is 
broken  to  harness  and  he  can  pull  a  load.  If  he  is 
not  free  he  still  knows  his  limitations,  and  one  ele- 
ment of  freedom  is  to  know  your  limitations  and  not 
bruise  yourself  against  them.  So  that  the  true  liberal 
is  not  concerned  pre-eminently  about  his  own  freedom. 
He  takes  that  for  granted.  He  finds  himself  in  good 
health  perhaps;  he  finds  himself  fairly  well  placed 
perhaps;  he  finds  himself  in  good  company,  and  then 
all  he  has  to  do  is  to  turn  his  mind  loose  and  watch 
it  go  and  see  what  comes  of  it.  And  perilous  things 
come  of  it  at  times.  Such  an  illustration  may  be 
found  in  the  story  that  I  have  told — to  some  of 
you,  no  doubt,  of  my  friend  in  New  York  who  is  a 
barber.  He  illustrated  these  perils  of  free  thought 
when  you  are  only  concerned  about  your  own  freedom. 
He  was  a  German.  I  sat  down  in  his  chair  and,  after 
trying  to  improve  nature  by  his  attention  to  my 
personal  appearance,  he  said  to  me,  "Veil,  Dochter, 


136  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

I  hafe  my  fiews  apout  religion."  I  congratulated  him. 
I  have  known  a  great  many  people  who  had  only 
glimpses  and  no  views  at  all.  "Veil,"  he  says,  "dere*s 
te  Piple;  dere's  de  Piple,  for  instance.  I  have  my 
fiews  apout  de  Piple."  ''Well,"  I  said,  "That's  a 
great  thing,  John,  to  have  your  own  views  about  the 
Bible."  "Veil,  now,"  he  says,  "I  gif  you  an  illustra- 
tion how  I  vork  dese  tings  out.  Dere's  dot  story  of 
Moses."  I  assented  as  well  as  I  could  under  the  edge 
of  the  knife.  He  says,  "Who  knows  vat  has  become 
of  Moses  ?"  "Well,"  I  said,  "Nobody  knows  what 
has  become  of  Moses.  The  Bible  says  that  he  went 
up  on  the  mountain  and  "God  buried  him,"  which,  I 
suppose,  is  a  poetic  way  of  saying  that  nobody  knows 
what  became  of  him."  "Oh,  veil,"  he  says,  "I  'af 
vorked  all  ofdot  out;  I  know  all  apout  dot."  "Well," 
I  said,  "What  did  become  of  him  V  "Veil,"  he  says, 
"You  know  dot  golden  calf  vich  Moses  mate  ?"  I 
said,  "I  remember  there  was  a  golden  calf  made  by 
Aaron,  the  brother  of  Moses."  "Veil,"  he  says, 
"Moses  mate  dot  calf,  all  right."  He  made  dot  out 
of  the  jewelery  that  the  Egyptians  gif  to  the  Hebrews, 
didn't  he  .?"  I  said,  "I  believe  that  is  the  story." 
"Veil,"  he  says,  "Wot  I  tink  is  dot  Moses  took  dot 
golden  calf  and  he  went  up  upon  von  site  of  Mount 
Sinai  and  he  vent  town  upon  te  other."  Well,  of 
course,  I  contradicted  that  view;  knowing  to  a  cer- 
tainty that  the  other  side  of  Mount  Sinai  ran  off  into 
the  sea,  I  thought  it  highly  improbable  that  Moses  had 
gone  down,  but  he  held  to  his  view,  and  he  said,  "Veil, 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL  I37 

you  may  doupt  it  but  I  tell  you  dere*s  anotter  ting 
.  about  dot  story.  If  dey  had  got  more  jewelry  from 
the  Egyptians  he  vould  'af  mate  a  cow."  (Laughter.) 
Now,  this  man  was  concerned  for  his  own  freedom 
and  so  he  had  devoted  the  gray  matter  of  what  he 
called  in  moments  of  humor  his  mind,  to  solving  the 
problem  for  himself  of  how  far  away  from  the  center 
of  things  he  could  get.  That  kind  of  liberal  is  to  be 
met  in  every  walk  in  life.  You  will  always  find  him 
sitting  on  the  edge  of  the  universe  with  his  feet  over, 
swinging  them  in  the  abyss;  he  has  all  the  motion  of 
walking  but  there  is  nowhere  to  go.  That  is  the 
kind  of  liberal  who  is  concerned  in  his  own  freedom 
and  only  knows  his  liberalism  as  a  form  of  protest 
against  what  has  been  thought.  If  you  were  a  minis- 
ter of  religion  in — New  York,  for  instance, — ^you 
would  know  what  a  vast  variety  this  term  "liberar* 
covers,  not  only  one's  own  solid,  sober  and  serious 
constitutency,  busy  with  great  work  that  falls  to  a 
historic  church,  but  all  kinds  of  things  that  blow  in, 
as  moths  to  the  flame,  for  instance,  as  Mr.  Olmsted 
so  graphically  and  beautifully  expressed  it — the  only 
trouble  with  his  figure  was  that  the  bird  was  not  big 
enough  for  the  fire.  But  still,  in  a  great  city  like  that 
all  forms  of  dissent  appear,  all  manner  of  experiments 
with  the  mind.  One  of  the  most  interesting  aspects 
of  liberal  thinking  now  as  it  appears  under  this  first 
head  of  my  address  to  you,  of  people  who  are  con- 
cerned only  to  be  free,  who  want  to  shake  themselves 
loose  from  all  fetters,  who  wish  to  be  liberated  from 


138  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

all  bonds,  who  want  to  unlace  themselves  from  the 
confinement  of  any  restrictions  whatever, — one  of 
the  most  interesting  is  the  phase  that  comes  under 
its  manifest  aspects  now  in  every  city  of  what  is 
known  as  the  new  psychology.  It  is  a  more  various 
form  of  mental  abberation  than  almost  any  other 
that  can  be  named  and  ranges  all  the  way  from  the 
soul  taking  revenge  for  its  own  neglect  to  a  declara- 
tion by  the  man  who  fell  over  a  chair  in  the  dark  last 
night,  that  there  is  no  external  world.  These  are  but 
aspects  of  the  same  general  condition  of  mind  in 
which  one  wishes  to  be  free  on  any  terms.  It  is  a 
good  deal  like  the  situation  that  you  encounter  in 
some  of  our  new  dependencies;  you  don't  seem  entirely 
to  depend.  This  condition  appears  all  the  way  from 
Tagalogs,  who  think  they  know  what  they  want,  to 
Igorrotes  who  only  want  to  be  let  alone;  all  the 
way  from  people  who,  upon  the  coast  at  Manila, 
would  form  a  constitution  and  improvise  a  state,  to 
people  in  the  high  hills  of  Luzon  who,  if  they  may 
draw  their  bow  to  the  arrow's  head  and  discharge  it 
at  any  game,  do  not  care  for  the  world's  civilized 
intervention  on  any  terms.  This  is  the  world  in 
miniature  that  we  have  in  the  isles  of  the  sea — and 
the  world  in  miniature  depending  upon  previous  con- 
dition of  servitude  to  some  binding  condition,  depend- 
ing upon  some  new  outlook  which  invites  the  prophetic 
element  in  the  soul,  depending  upon  some  gift  of  the 
imagination  that  lifts  with  its  wings  the  whole  body 
of  thought  and  is  not  simply  a  set  of  opinions,  never 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL  IJiQ 

a  set  of  opinions  that  can  be  fixed  and  staid,  but  only 
a  state  of  mind,  a  temperament,  a  purpose,  and  that 
purpose  never  well  served  when  it  is  concerned  solely 
with  being  free.  Now,  the  purpose  of  strength  is  to 
do  the  world's  work.  The  purpose  of  mind  is  to 
promote  the  sane  thinking  of  the  world.  The  pur- 
pose of  wealth  is  to  vindicate  the  trusteeship  of  him 
who  has  it  for  the  common  good.  Things  are  never 
ends  in  themselves.  There  is  nothing  that  is  an  end 
in  itself;  nothing  can  have  a  line  drawn  about  it  and 
be  isolated  and  segregated  from  the  common  condi- 
tion. The  smallest  insect  that  now  in  a  few  weeks 
will  begin  to  crawl  in  the  woods  under  the  warming 
influence  of  the  spring  sun,  however  minute  he  may 
be,  however  insignificant  he  may  be  to  your  observa- 
tion, not  even  this  little  brother  of  the  earth  can  have 
a  line  drawn  about  him  but  that  he  would  protest  if 
he  had  consciousness  of  it  against  the  intervention  of 
any  limiting  power  and  claim  that  the  sidereal  uni- 
verse and  he  were  part  of  one  system  together.  There 
is  no  possibility  of  such  segregation,  isolation.  We 
cannot  be  an  end  to  ourselves.  For  this  reason,  now, 
the  liberalism  of  which  we  speak  appears  in  every 
aspect  of  life;  not  simply  in  the  field  of  religion,  not 
simply  in  the  field  of  philosophy,  but  in  life's  most 
practical  aspects  as  well.  It  appears  in  the  attitude 
of  a  man  toward  his  earnings.  I  come  upon  two 
classes  of  people  continually:  One  set  who  declare 
that  they  are  the  victims  of  an  illiberal  world  and 
the  other  who  declare  that  they  will  do  what  they 


140  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

will  with  their  own.  And  there  is  not  much  to  choose 
between  these  two  states  of  mind.  There  is  much  to 
chose  between  their  condition,  for  the  man  who  com- 
plains of  an  illiberal  world  is  a  poor  man  usually;  a 
man  who  is  struggling;  he  is  often  a  man  who  does 
not  struggle  to  much  purpose;  his  conditions  limit 
him,  his  limitations  are  too  severe  for  him  to  bear 
easily;  he  is  in  narrow  confines  of  a  very  small  gauge, 
under  the  conditions  of  his  life,  but  he  is  often  an 
honest,  hard-working  man  who  has  the  idea  that 
there  is  nothing  that  makes  wealth  in  the  world 
except  labor,  and  by  that  he  usually  means — although 
the  economists  that  he  quotes  do  not  say  so — he 
usually  means  hand-labor,  labor  that  tires  the  mus- 
cles, labor  that  makes  a  man  sweat,  labor  that  gives 
you  so  many  hours  of  work  as  so  much  a  day.  Usu- 
ally he  means  that.  That  is  his  form  of  illiberalism. 
He  does  not  know;  he  is  not  to  blame,  perhaps,  for 
not  knowing  that  there  never  was  a  day's  work  in 
material  that  did  not  express  itself  sooner  or  later 
in  terms  of  thought;  that  the  bridge  that  hangs  over 
a  great  stream,  as  at  St.  Louis,  as  at  New  York,  hung 
up  in  the  head  of  the  engineer,  complete  in  every 
point,  with  every  pound  of  strain  calculated  in  the 
material  that  was  to  be  used,  and  the  material  of  such 
a  grade,  in  order  that  the  calculation  might  be  made; 
it  hung  up  in  the  engineer's  head  complete  in  every 
part  before  ever  a  wire  was  drawn  or  a  pound  of  it 
was  carried  from  pier  to  pier.  It  was  labor  in  terms 
of  thought,  first,  before  it  was  labor  in   terms  of 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL  141 

matter  and  of  skill.  That  is  his  form  of  illiberalism. 
But  he  is  only  a  representative  of  a  common  attitude 
of  mind,  the  attitude  of  the  man  who  insists  that  the 
thing  that  he  is  doing  and  the  end  that  he  serves  and 
the  purpose  to  v^hich  he  devotes  himself  is  the  only 
way  of  getting  the  world  on.  The  other  extreme  is 
the  man  who  is  ruining  a  great  state  by  a  great  rail- 
road, for  instance,  a  railroad  that  will  charge  from 
the  Pacific  border  of  the  State  to  its  eastern  border,  a 
freight  that  is  equal  to  the  charge  from  the  western 
border  of  the  State  to  the  eastern  border  of  the  conti- 
nent; a  man  who  will  collect  from  the  farmers  in  the 
great  valleys  of  California  $i.oo  out  of  every  $3.00  as 
freight  for  the  maintenance  of  the  system  to  which 
he  has  devoted  himself  as  a  railroad  magnate,  and 
when  he  is  asked  to  confer  with  the  people  of  Cali- 
fornia quietly  damns  them  and  says  "the  railroad 
business  will  last  his  time."  Well,  it  has.  But  that 
does  not  alter  the  fact  that  he  invited  perdition;  that 
does  not  alter  the  fact  that  into  the  narrow  crevice  of 
his  mind,  by  some  mystery  of  Divine  Providence, 
there  was  forced  a  vein  of  gold; — the  world  will  live 
long  enough  to  dig  it  out,  melt  it  down  and  send  it 
afield  for  the  freedom  of  his  kind. 

Now,  on  the  other  hand,  we  get  a  representative 
of  liberalism  as  unregarding  his  own  freedom  in  such 
a  man  as  Mr.  Carnegie.  Mr.  Carnegie  has  made  a 
great  discovery.  It  was  not  that  he  could  sell  out  his 
steel  holdings  and  get  an  income  of  fifteen  millions  a 
year,  as  he  is  credited  with  doing;  that  was  not  his 


142  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

discovery;  his  discovery  v^as  that  he  v^as  a  trustee 
of  v^^ealth. 

Mr.  Carnegie  is  called  self-educated;  I  should  say 
well  educated,  though  not  completely  informed; — 
a  man  may  be  only  half  informed  and  completely 
educated;  because  he  may  have  the  power  of  his 
faculties,  to  use  them  as  he  will,  and  the  power  to 
take  his  mind  up  whole  and  deposit  it  where  he  wants 
it  to  serve  the  end  of  that  moment;  he  is  educated  if 
he  can  do  that,  no  matter  what  he  knows;  Mr. 
Carnegie  made  the  same  discovery  under  his  con- 
ditions that  was  made  nearly  a  century  ago  by 
Thomas  Wedgewood,  the  potter,  in  England.  He 
and  his  brother,  desiring  that  Coleridge  should  re- 
ceive from  them  an  annuity,  and  knowing  the  sensi- 
tiveness of  that  old  man's  mind,  wrote  Coleridge  a 
letter,  saying:  "I  and  my  brother  have  a  certain 
superfluity  of  riches  and  we  long  ago  determined  that 
we  were  not  owners  but  trustees."  Then  he  asks 
him  to  take  this  small  annuity  year  by  year  as  long 
as  he  shall  live.  Thomas  Wedgewood  and  his  brother 
made  the  same  discovery:  That  you  can  coin  your- 
self into  your  holdings,  but  that  is  not  the  end  of 
liberalism  unless  you  re-mint  them  into  the  circu- 
lation of  the  world.  Now,  you  come  to  Mr.  Carnegie, 
with  this  in  his  mind,  and  you  approach  him  on  an 
entirely  different  side.  He  said  to  me  only  three 
weeks  ago,  before  he  left  for  Scotland,  'T  haven't  the 
slightest  interest  in  anything  religious.  No  theology 
interests  me  whatever.     I  do  not  care  for  anything 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL  ^  I43 

along  that  field.  I  do  not  say  heaven  is  our  home;  I 
say  home  is  our  heaven."  Well  nov^r,  he  thought  that 
was  a  discovery.  He  thought  he  had  made  a  dis- 
covery. That  is  just  one  of  the  discoveries  that  is 
made  independently  by  every  man  who  is  well  placed 
in  life  as  to  his  home  conditions:  He  wants  to  post- 
^  pone  heaven  and  enjoy  the  folks.  (Laughter.)  But 
Mr.  Carnegie's  illiberalism  showed  itself  in  that  re- 
mark in  this  particular.  He  is  planting  libraries  until 
at  a  little  dinner  that  was  given  him  a  while  ago  the 
names  of  the  libraries  that  he  had  endowed  made 
the  frame  of  the  menu,  and  yet  when  he  said,  "I  am 
not  interested  in  anything  religious,  theological, 
doctrinal,  ethical;  those  things  don't  appeal  to  me," 
he  forgot  an  important  consideration;  a  delicate 
thing  is  the  liberal  spirit;  it  may  be  Hke  an  itching  in 
the  palm  to  get  and  then  an  effort  to  take  it  out  of 
the  hand  that  grasped  it,  and  throw  it  away  in  the 
world's  face  that  the  world  might  benefit  by  the 
bestowal  of  it;  and  yet  in  another  aspect  of  the  mind 
the  illiberalism  appear:  Mr.  Carnegie  forgets  that  if 
he  were  to  go  through  the  libraries  that  he  founds  and 
take  from  their  shelves  the  books  that  deal  with 
religion,  whose  inspiration  is  religion,  whose  phrases 
have  been  baptised  in  the  fonts  of  sanctity,  he  would 
leave  the  shelves  denuded  of  half  their  treasures,  and 
he  would  see  he  had  placed  his  money  there  to  build 
a  skeleton  library  out  of  which  much  had  departed 
that  was  the  very  flesh  and  blood  of  its  existence. 
Shakespeare  would  have  disappeared  at  least  by  a 


144  •  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB. 

fourth;  even  the  play  with  the  title  of  Thomas 
Dekker,  unnamable  in  this  presence,  would  lose  out 
of  its  pages  the  phrase, 

"  The  best  of  men 
That  e'er  wore  earth  about  him  was  a  sufferer  ; 
A  soft,  meek,  patient,  humble,  tranquil  spirit, 
The  first  true  gentleman  that  ever  breathed." 

You  remember  this  phrase  in  Thomas  Dekker's  play 
where  he  refers  to  Christ.  So  that  Mr.  Carnegie's 
liberalism  of  the  hand  and  of  the  heart  has  this  spot 
upon  the  radiance  of  its  sun,  this  spot  upon  the 
luminous  disc  that  is  in  the  mid-heaven  of  our  com- 
mercial life  now;  that  he  forgets  that  religion  is  a 
function  of  the  human  soul  and  that  you  can  no  more 
deny  it  than  you  can  dismiss  breathing  as  a  function 
of  the  lungs  or  palpitation  as  the  systole  and  diastole 
of  the  heart.  So  I  insist  that  freedom,  liberalism,  is 
not  for  its  own  sake;  it  is  not  to  be  concerned  with 
its  own  freedom.  The  French  have  a  very  good 
phrase  concerning  the  man  who  is  ''the  slave  of  his 
own  liberty."  Let  me  tell  you  a  story  to  illustrate 
this.  A  group  of  my  friends  were  sitting  to  hear  a 
paper  upon  social  equality  delivered  by  a  woman;  I 
think  she  does  not  know  much  philosophy,  but  she 
has  an  immense  power  of  affection  for  the  human  race 
and  when  she  goes  up  the  road  by  my  house  in  the 
summer  the  beatitudes  train  after  her  like  a  luminous 
garment;  she  was  reading  a  paper  upon  social  equahty 
and  the  audience  was  composed  of  all  kinds  of  people, 
all  kinds  of  liberals;  there  were  Russian  nihilists,  who 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL  145 

are  liberal — with  dynamite;  there  were  socialists,  who 
are  liberal — with  the  theory  of  social  construction  and 
are  in  the  attitude  of  Archimedes,  still,  who  had  the 
lever  and  the  weight  but  he  had  no  fulcrum  on  which 
to  put  the  lever  that  he  might  lift  the  weight; — he  said 
if  he  could  have  a  fulcrum  for  his  lever  that  he  could 
lift  the  world;  he  did  not  seem  to  remember  that  he 
^himself  would  want  standing-ground  when  he  was 
working  his  lever.  This  paper  was  being  read  to  an 
assortment  such  as  I  have  sketched  out  in  part  only. 
Well,  in  this  company  was  one  Boston  woman,  of 
honorable  antecedents,  stopping  somewhere  this  side 
of  our  simian  friends;  she  was  florid  and  large  and 
comfortable  and  couldn't  imagine  social  equality. 
Beside  her  sat  a  little  sliver  of  a  woman  who  reminds 
me  of  that  passage  from  the  Psalms,  where  it  is 
written  of  man:  *'Thou  hast  made  him  a  little  lower 
than  the  angels," — the  literal  translation  of  which 
is,  **Thou  hast  made  him  just  a  shaving  off  deity." 
Well,  that  was  her  build;  but  in  that  narrow  frame 
of  hers  the  revolutions  of  thought  had  their  way  and 
great  convulsions  of  the  social  order  were  enacted. 
These  two  women  sat  side  by  side,  the  woman  who 
did  not  want  any  social  equality  and  the  woman 
who  wanted  anything  there  was  in  sight,  and  when 
the  paper  that  my  friend  had  read  was  over,  the 
large  and  florid  and  kindly  woman  turned  to  the 
little  sliver  of  a  woman,  who  was  an  utter  radical  and 
said:  *T  don't  seem  to  understand  Mrs.  So-and-so's 
position.      I    don't    think    that    even    Jesus    taught 

10 


146  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 


\     soc, 
\  ttr> 


social  equality.'*  "Didn't  he  ?"  said  the  little  woman, 
m  disappointed  in  him.''  Now,  that  actually 
happened.  There  was  no  irreverence  in  her  reply. 
She  simply  could  not  understand  that  in  the  world 
there  is  provision  for  both  statics  and  dynamics,  and 
that  something  must  come  to  rest  and  everything 
cannot  continually  be  in  motion,  and  the  power  of 
meditation  is  as  real  a  power  as  the  power  of  revolu- 
tion. These  are  illustrations  of  what  we  get  in  the 
multitude  we  meet.  It  is  an  assorted  world,  a  kaleido- 
scopic variety  of  all  types  of  liberalism;  you  turn  the 
tube  and  you  get  a  new  figure  and  you  turn  it  again 
and  get  a  new  figure.  Some  of  them  mean  something 
and  some  of  them  do  not.  There  is  your  kaleidoscope 
and  you  look  down  the  tube  and  you  have  a  beautiful 
time. 

Now,  the  second  condition  of  the  true  liberal  is 
that  he  is  always  constructive.  His  intention  is  to 
build.  He  is  a  long  time  getting  at  it  sometimes,  he 
has  so  much  land  to  clear,  but  that  is  the  fault  of  the 
primeval  forest;  he  has  so  much  land  to  plant,  but 
it  is  the  fault  of  the  stony  ground  that  he  is  so  long 
about  it.  He  has  so  much  land  now  prepared  to  sow 
with  seed,  but  it  is  because  of  the  wealth  of  his  seed 
crop  that  it  takes  so  long  to  put  it  in;  but  at  last  you 
go  bowling  along  in  the  trains  through  Iowa,  by 
miles  of  standing  corn  twice  the  height  of  a  man  and 
you  wonder  where  the  famine  of  the  world  is  that 
shall  be  fed  by  all  this.  It  is  the  constructive  result 
of  workers  who  work  to  that  end,  and  the  harvest 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL  147 

that  is  to  be,  the  true  liberal  is  always  intent  upon 
preparing.  Now,  the  other  kind  of  man  who  is  not 
constructive  but  simply  palliative,  knows  there  is 
something  the  matter  with  the  heart  of  the  world. 
He  understands  that  people  are  immensely  uncom- 
fortable, either  in  their  condition  or  in  their  mind  or 
in  their  estate,  and  he  proposes  to  modify  their  pain 
by  making  them  unconscious  of  it.  He  is  like  the 
physician  who  sometimes,  I  suppose,  must  administer 
an  opiate  to  ease  the  present  suffering,  but  who  has  to 
wait  at  least  in  part  until  its  effect  disappears  before 
he  can  discover  what  is  the  matter  with  his  patient. 
That  is  the  palliative  process  that  is  exercised  by  the 
man  who  is  not  a  true  Uberal  but  only  wants  people 
to  be  comfortable.  That  is  the  kind  of  person  that 
thinks  that  reality  is  coincident  with  its  definitions — 
the  most  pestiferous  heresy  that  ever  was  promul- 
gated in  the  world;  the  heresy  that  took  possession 
of  the  mind  of  the  Christian  Church  in  the  fourth 
century  and  substituted  the  accuracy  of  opinion  for 
the  experience  of  life  and  forever  after  has  been 
matching  definitions  together,  matching  them  as 
children  on  the  street,  little  Italian  children,  match 
pennies,  at  their  game  of  early  gambling.  A  kind 
of  levity  possesses  such  minds; — imagining  that 
definitions  are  reality.  To  come  back  to  my  figure 
of  the  standing  corn,  if  the  definition  were  the  reality, 
if  the  prescription  were  the  medicine,  if  the  formula 
were  the  fact,  then  you  might  cure  the  famine  of 
India  by  sending  them  a  cargo  of  cook-books.  That  is 


148  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

an  illustration  of  liberalism  which  is  not  constructive. 
It  postpones  the  collisions  of  thought.  It  feels  the 
fear  of  criticism  and  of  that  preparatory  destructive 
v^^ork  of  criticism  that  in  every  field  of  thought  has 
had  to  postpone  the  constructive  period  that  was 
bound  to  succeed  if  men  were  faithful  and  devoted 
to  the  truth.  I  do  not  relish  the  critical  attitude — 
most  of  all  for  the  effect  on  the  critic,  for  it  makes 
him  often  sour,  it  even  puts  him  into  the  ludicrous 
position  that  it  is  said  the  German  professor  was  in 
when  he  engaged  in  discussion  whether  the  name  of 
the  Deity  in  the  Old  Testament  was  to  be  pronounced 
"Jehovah"  or  "Yahreth,"  or  "Jah:"  nobody  knew; 
but  this  professor  offering  prayer  at  a  German  uni- 
versity addressed  the  being  he  was  supposed  to  repre- 
sent by  one  or  the  other  of  those  representations, 
.  "O,  Thou,  great  Javah,  whom  that  fool  Gesemus 
insists  on  calling  Jehovah."  That  is  said  to  have 
taken  place  at  the  University  of  Leipsic.  Now,  that 
is  the  critical  attitude  that  you  deplore.  It  is  the 
attitude  of  acerbity,  the  attitude  of  contention,  the 
attitude  of  debate,  the  attitude  of  the  suspended 
judgment,  that  is  most  upset  in  the  constructive 
period  that  is  sure  to  follow.  But  all  criticism  must 
be  for  the  sake  of  construction  finally  or  it  is  not  true 
liberalism.  In  clearing  of  the  ground,  yes,  cut  away 
the  forest  and  break  up  the  furrow,  thin  out  the 
stone,  burn  off  the  brush,  keep  back  the  weeds;  when 
the  sharp  tooth  of  the  harrow  has  followed  the  blade 
of  the  plow,  sow  it  thick  with  the  golden  wheat  that 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL  149 

shall  feed  the  famine  of  the  world;  but  the  hunger  of 
the  world  is  all  along  the  procuring  cause  of  every 
axe-stroke  and  of  every  plowshare's  thrust. 

More  than  this,  the  true  liberal  has  moral  passion. 
There  is  nothing  more  painful  to  the  man  who  is  in 
the  business  of  liberalism  than  to  find  people  who 
imagine  that  they  are  liberal  without  moral  passion. 
That  is,  it  is  a  kind  of  dilettante  liberalism;  it  is  a 
nice  bric-a-brac  liberalism;  it  would  look  just  as  well 
on  a  shelf  as  it  does  on  their  mind.  It  is  a  kind  of 
thing  that  if  you  could  get  it  crystallized  you  might 
take  home  and  make  an  ornament.  Frivolous  liber- 
alism, fragile,  curious,  wanting  in  seriousness.  Over 
and  over  again  you  are  confronted  with  that  kind. 
That  has  no  moral  passion.  Let  me  tell  you  a  story. 
I  was  in  a  company  once  where  a  lot  of  working 
people  were  having  what  they  called  a  free-and-easy 
of  song  and  recitation.  I  was  to  speak  to  them  upon 
some  civic  topic,  and  this  was  the  part  of  the  pro- 
gramme that  preceded  and  was  supposed  to  get  their 
minds  into  a  state  to  endure  what  I  had  to  say,  a  kind 
of  coffee  before  the  speech.  (Laughter.)  In  the 
midst  of  this  performance  there  came  out  to  the 
front  to  sing  a  young  woman  about  20  years  of  age 
who  had  no  palate.  She  had  to  sing.  The  tones  were 
not  bad,  but  there  was  no  enunciation.  "Now,"  I 
said  to  myself  as  I  looked  at  that  company — I  was 
sitting  facing  them, — *T  wonder  what  you  will  do; 
I  wonder  how  your  freedom  and  liberality  and  charity 
of  mind  will  appear  .?    I  know  what  respectable  people 


150  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

would  do;  I  know  what  so-called  society  groups 
would  do.  They  would  shrug  a  shoulder  and  say 
Tt's  too  bad/  They  would  lift  an  eye-brow  to  each 
other  to  say,  *Did  you  ever  see  the  like  ?'  They  would 
look  askance,  as  much  as  to  say,  *Has  she  no  friends  ?' 
That  is  what  they  would  do."  So  I  watched  what 
my  working  friends  would  do.  A  young  fellow  was 
playing  the  accompaniment  of  this  girl  who  was 
singing  under  these  conditions  of  limitation  and  dis- 
tress and  who  should  not  have  been  singing,  of 
course.  This  young  man  who  was  playing  the 
accompaniment  was  a  weaver  at  ^8.00  a  week,  with 
his  hands  grimy  .  nd  twisted;  he  seemed  to  know  the 
accompaniments  of  all  these  songs.  I  watched  to  see 
what  the  company  would  do,  and  I  give  you  my  word 
there  was  not  an  eye-brow  lifted,  nor  a  shoulder 
raised,  nor  a  look  askance,  nor  the  slightest  sign 
which  might  have  embarrassed  that  unfortunate  girl, 
and  when  the  song  was  over  I  found  my  eyes  swim- 
ming because  of  the  chivalry,  the  splendid  loyalty, 
the  stand-together-ness  of  it  all.  There  was  just 
enough  applause  to  make  her  feel  she  had  not  failed. 
That  is  moral  passion  taking  the  form  of  brotherhood. 
And  I  told  this  story  to  a  mill  owner's  daughter  whose 
father  employed  2,000  of  these  people  and  she  said, 
"How  very  interesting!"  This  pet  of  wealth  thought 
she  was  free.  I  knew  that  where  her  heart  should  be 
beating  for  her  father's  help,  there  were  little  fancies 
about  the  world,  playing  at  hide-and-seek  with  the 
opportunity  of  a  frivolous  life;  there  was  no  moral 


THE    TRUE   LIBERAL  151 

passion.  The  true  liberal  has  a  fire  in  his  bones.  He 
gets  to  the  state  of  mind  in  which  he  does  not  care 
what  becomes  of  him,  provided  the  word  that  he 
has  to  speak  goes  on.  You  may  burn  him  at  the 
stake  because  he  has  to  kindle  a  light  by  which  men 
shall  see  their  way;  you  may  put  him  into  prison 
because  he  is  too  dangerous  to  be  abroad;  you  may 
expel  him  over  the  Russian  frontier  because,  however 
mistaken,  still  really  he  seeks  to  reproduce  the  spirit 
and  life  of  Christ;  you  may  turn  him  from  his  geo- 
graphical studies  and  immune  him  in  Russian  prisons, 
as  Kropotkin  was  for  years,  and  he  will  dig  his  way 
out  through  the  kindly  earth  of  which  he  is  geog- 
rapher and  son  at  once.  Moral  passion  is  an  essential 
of  the  true  liberal. 

And  finally,  the  true  liberal  not  only  is  to  be  con- 
structive and  have  moral  passion,  but  he  must  have 
an  unswerving  loyalty  to  truth,  of  which  his  con- 
fidence in  the  universe  is  the  twin  in  his  thinking. 
Now,  there  is  a  difference  between  truth  and  truths. 
Frederick  Robertson  long  ago  laid  down  the  dis- 
tinction between  veracity  and  truth.  I  am  veracious 
\when  I  tell  the  thing  as  I  see  it;  I  am  truthful  when 
I  tell  the  thing  as  it  is.  No  man  can  rise  above  the 
opportunities  of  his  own  vision,  but  he  can  be  ever 
looking  ahead  for  a  new  vision  to  which  he  shall 
be  true.  The  readjustment  of  the  mind  is  his  busi- 
ness. There  is  nothing  settled  for  him  forever  be- 
cause  the  universe  is  not  finished.  In  a  world  that  is 
still  in  the  making  you  cannot  have  fixed  opinions 


152  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

that  are  finished  and  tucked  in  and  tied  with  a  blue 
ribbon.  If  God  is  at  work  making  worlds,  is  it  too 
much  for  him  to  expect  that  his  children  shall  be 
at  work  making  thought  ?  If  the  Infinite  and  Eternal 
Mind  be  the  mother-stuff  of  which  all  things  are  made, 
is  it  too  much  for  the  universe  in  its  conscious  intelli- 
gence to  expect  the  thinking  machinery  of  the  world 
to  be  ever  active  and  turning  out  new  conditions  of 
thought  ?  Why,  that  happens  to  the  mind,  that 
happens  to  every  machine.  On  every  machine  there 
sit  two  little  sprites,  one  called  Friction  and  the 
other  Rust,  and  Rust  says,  "If  you  stop,  I'll  eat  you 
^  up,"  and  Friction  says,  "If  you  keep  going  I'll  wear 
you  out."  There  you  are.  Now,  the  devotion  to 
truth  is  the  lubricant  that  keeps  you  going  without 
danger  of  being  worn  out.  It  is  the  gentle  lubricant 
of  thought;  it  is  the  spray  that  falls  upon  the  mental 
mechanism  that  keeps  it  going  without  risk  of  clog 
or  of  rust  or  of  friction.  The  loyalty  to  truth  is  a 
passion  in  the  true  liberal's  mind.  Is  it  commercial  ? 
He  wants  to  know  whether  centralization  or  small 
holdings  are  the  true  relation  of  the  economic  world. 
If  he  is  a  true  man,  aside  from  his  own  personal  affairs, 
he  is  absolutely  careless  as  to  the  answer,  provided 
the  answer  is  true.  You  talk  to  him;  you  say,  "We 
are  going  to  have  the  question  discussed  anew;  here 
is  a  gentleman  who  will  discuss  the  organization  of 
labor,  there  is  a  gentleman  who  will  discuss  the 
centralization  of  power."  "Very  well,"  said  he,  "I 
will  stand  between  them  and  I  will  hear  the  debate 


\ 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL!  153 

and  I  will  get  the  conclusion  that  is  true,  if  I  can,  and 
I  will  adjust  my  business  and  the  ordering  of  my  life 
to  the  conclusion,  as  I  see  it,  when  they  get  through." 
That  is  the  attitude  of  the  true  liberal,  while  another 
type  of  man  simply  swears  at  Hanna  or  damns  the 
trades  unions.  That  is  the  illiberal  attitude.  That 
is  not  the  attitude  of  moral  passion,  though  it  swears; 
it  is  not  the  attitude  of  the  constructive  liberal;  it  is 
not  the  attitude  of  the  man  who  believes  that  this  is 
an  ordered  world  and  there  is  no  more  chance  in  it 
for  a  mistake  than  there  is  for  a  miracle;  that  it  never 
slips  a  cog,  never  drops  a  band,  never  has  a  pivot 
escape  from  its  holdings.  It  is  a  world  that  runs  all 
right.  If  I  believed  that  God  were  only  a  procession 
of  law  I  would  try  to  hear  his  foot-fall  and  keep  step. 
If  I  thought  he  was  only  a  stream  of  tendency  I  would 
find  out,  if  I  could,  where  the  stream  rose,  in  what  far, 
high  hills  of  thought,  between  what  banks  it  flowed, 
and  into  what  sea  it  emptied  itself  and  I  would  set  the 
freight  of  my  thought  on  that  current  and  go  with  it 
to  its  own  destiny.  When  Emerson  said  we  must 
"trust  the  universe  so  far  as  to  believe  that  such 
questions  as  the  order  of  nature  prompts  us  to  ask 
the  order  of  nature  can  answer,"  his  was  the  statement 
of  absolute  faith.  You  do  not  speak  into  the  void 
when  you  make  your  passionate  inquiry  to  know  the 
truth.  You  are  concerned  only  to  know.  It  was 
not  for  nothing  that  there  grew  up  in  the  Yankee 
vocabulary  the  phrase  "I  want  to  know!"  Perhaps 
the   vulgarities    of  village   life   gave   it   illustration 


154  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

sometimes.  The  too  close  contact  of  mere  village  com- 
munities made  the  "want  to  know"  tend  to  gossip, 
but  that  inherent  wanting-to-know  that  in  New 
England  had  its  root,  was  also  the  reason  for  the 
fact  that  under  the  snows  of  New  England  was 
kindled  every  conflagration  that  burned  its  way  to 
moral  reform  in  the  first  seventy-five  years  of  this 
nation's  life.  Snows  could  not  quench  its  fire  nor  the 
ice  lay  its  barriers  so  that  it  should  not  have  its  way, 
and  the  fetter  of  the  slave  was  melted  first  in  the 
heart  of  New  England,  under  its  reticent  exterior  and 
then  fell  apart  as  Abraham  Lincoln  touched  it  with 
his  pen.  This  passion  to  know,  this  fidelity  to  truth, 
liberates  a  man  from  all  nice  considerations  of  popu- 
larity. But  he  may  go  into  a  transaction,  into  the 
transaction  of  life,  if  you  please,  out  of  the  loins  of 
parents  handicapped  and  disabled.  I  knew  a  man 
who  was  afraid  all  his  life  long  because  he  was  born 
from  a  woman  whose  whole  life  had  been  spent  with 
struggle  against  heart  disease  and  the  fear  of  immedi- 
ate death;  he  had  congenital  timidity;  I  knew  another 
man  who  went  disgraced  out  of  the  army  of  the 
civil  war,  true  in  every  other  relation  of  life,  but  he 
could  not  stand  the  sight  of  blood  and  the  firing  of  a 
gun.  But  to  men  born  so,  if  there  be  in  them  the 
fidelity  to  truth,  the  passion  to  know,  the  devotion 
to  the  order  of  the  world,  sooner  or  later,  out  of  their 
slack  loins  shall  come  a  creature  with  a  spine  that 
will  connect  all  the  way  down.  They  will  not  be  in 
idle  debate  with  themselves  forever  as  to  what  this 


THE  TRUE  LIBERAL  155 

or  that  man  may  say,  but  they  shall  sit  down  with 
Thoreau  on  the  banks  of  Walden  to  watch  that  little 
panorama  of  the  life  of  God  and  be  content;  they 
shall  go  into  some  hard  place  of  business,  and  sooner 
or  later  somebody  will  find  out  that  there  is  a  man 
who  has  discovered  *'to  what  heights  of  divinity  a 
man  must  look  up  and  upon  what  adamantine  man- 
hood he  must  take  his  stand;"  sooner  or  later  the 
habit  of  the  undiverted  eye,  the  habit  of  the  pulse 
that  cannot  be  quickened  by  fear  nor  stilled  by  the 
inertia  and  weight  of  life,  sooner  or  later  the  man  of 
the  free  soul  shall  match  the  man  of  the  free  mind 
and  he  shall  look  to  the  heavens  to  watch  for  God 
while  he  bends  his  knee  in  prayer  for  the  humblest 
need  of  life.     (Applause.) 


Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen,  I  will  occupy  only 
a  moment  in  closing.  I  wish  to  thank  the  club  again 
for  its  courtesy  and  kindness,  which  I  believe  to  be 
more  than  courtesy,  in  asking  me  to  this  anniversary 
of  the  club  that  I  hold  very  dear  in  my  memory  and 
of  which  I  am,  if  I  recall  rightly,  the  first  honorary 
member.  I  believe  I  was  elected  an  honorary  mem- 
ber after  my  removal.  It  was  very  kind  of  Buffalo  to 
throw  that  life-line  out  to  me  in  the  wash  and  swirl  of 
New  York,  so  that  I  might  be  anchored  somewhere. 
But  I  want  to  say  a  single  word  in  closing.  The 
extremely  clever  reference  of  Mr.  Hubbard  to  my 
being  a  professing  Presbyterian  makes  me  feel  that 
perhaps  he  forgot  that  I  was  already  described  as  a 


166  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

moth,  seeking  New  York  as  a  flame;  the  two  things 
have  a  suggestion  of  an  uninterrupted  fire.  But  that 
is  only  by-play;  that  is  part  of  my  liberalism.  What 
I  really  wanted  to  say  was  this:  That  the  test  of 
liberalism  in  the  last  analysis  is  spiritual  sympathy, 
the  ability  to  climb  up,  as  Mr.  Colgate  has  so  grace- 
fully said,  to  climb  up  and  see  what  the  other  man 
sees.  Now,  it  is  a  very  narrow  ledge  that  does  not 
afford  footing  for  two.  You  simply  do  not  take  your 
stand  there  while  he  stands  there  and  tell  what  you 
see  and  he  tells  what  he  sees,  but  you  change  places; 
he  comes  over  and  visits  your  ledge  and  sees  what 
you  see.  The  real  leadership  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth — 
that  most  revered  name  in  the  history  of  human 
thought — the  real  secret  of  devotion  and  leadership 
in  following  as  his  disciple,  is  that  he  shows  that 
there  is  a  path  to  the  height  and  because  he  is  on 
the  height  telling  what  he  sees,  every  devout  spirit 
says  there  must  be  a  path  thither  or  he  never  could 
have  reached  it;  I  will  go  by  the  path  and  when  I 
have  looked  once  in  his  face  for  love's  sake  I  will  try 
to  see  what  he  sees.  That  is  discipleship;  that  is 
spiritual  sympathy;  that  is  the  communion  of  soul. 
That  is  the  only  liberalism  that  is  worth  while, — the 
effort  to  adjust  relations  in  life  so  that  the  mutual 
contribution  of  each  shall  constitute  the  added  power 
of  all.  That  is  the  worth  of  it.  And  the  final  test  of 
every  man  as  to  whether  he  is  merely  toying  with 
thought,  whether  he  is  merely  coquetting  with  free- 
dom, whether  he  is  merely  leading  a  small  insurrec- 


THE    TRUE    LIBERAL  157 

tion  in  the  field  of  philosophy,  for  instance;  the  test 
is  whether  he  is  capable  of  spiritual  sympathy  and 
can  work  with  the  man  who  does  not  agree  with 
his  thoughts  at  all.  If  he  stands  that  test  he  has  grad- 
uated in  the  school  of  liberal  thought.     (Applause.) 


Siitb  2)inncr, 

Hptil  23,  1901. 
THE    EUGENE    FIELD    I    KNEW. 

FRANCIS  WILSOK. 

One  of  the  most  eloquent  American  orators  once 
said,  on  beginning  a  lecture,  "It  does  not  matter  much 
what  kind  of  a  man  a  man's  father  is,  it  is  his  mother 
who  counts."  This  was  a  most  effective  expression, 
for  it  pleased  both  the  men  and  the  women  of  his 
audience.  Every  man  is  willing  to  subscribe  to  a  com- 
pliment to  his  mother — and  every  woman  is  willing 
to  subscribe  to  a  compliment  to  herself.  Among  the 
poets,  the  painters,  the  sculptors,  the  historians  and 
the  ballad-makers,  the  grand,  the  universal  theme  of 
mother — as  it  has  deserved — has  always  received  the 
full  measure  of  affectionate  attention.  The  father, 
on  the  other  hand,  among  the  poets,  the  painters,  the 
sculptors,  et  cetera,  does  not  appear  to  be  a  matter 
of  much  importance.  Poetically  and  emotionally  he 
appears  to  be  a  comparative  nonentity.  Indeed 
there  seems  to  be  very  little  use,  either  in  song  or 
story,  for  papa,  who  has  been  described  as  the  left 
wing  of  the  family  guard  which  always  wheels  to  the 
rear  in  active  engagements.  Who  among  us  recalls 
instantly  a  great  canvas  by  a  great  master  with  father 
as  the  principal  theme .?    Who  among  us  can  name 


THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW  159 

nstantly  a  great  poem  or  a  great  story  with  father  as 
the  hero  ?  On  the  other  hand,  who  cannot  name 
instantly  numerous  glorious  creations  of  Madonna 
mothers  by  master-hands  and  countless  poems,  in 
verse  and  stone,  of  mother  and  of  mother's  love  ? 
So,  to,  in  balladry,  there  appears  to  be  little  or  no 
place  for  father.  I  do  not  recall  a  single  popular  song 
but  one  in  which  father  figures  prominently — and  in 
that  he  is  intoxicated  and  is  being  beseeched  to  come 
home,  chiefly,  it  would  seem,  because  the  clock  in  the 
steeple  is  rapidly  striking  the  slumber  hours  of  the 
night.  From  whatever  point  of  view  we  regard  it,  it 
seems  conceded  that  the  paternal  as  compared  with 
the  maternal  relative  is  of  minor  importance,  and 
back  of  most  men  and  their  greatness  stands  out  in 
sweet  relief  the  benevolent  face  of  mother, — mother, 
mother,  mother,  always  mother!  I  am  far  from 
wishing  it  to  be  believed  that  I  am  not  in  full  sym- 
pathy with  this  condition  of  affairs;  oh,  no;  but  there 
are  those  who  do  not  hesitate  to  say — and  I  am  one — 
that  fathers,  good  fathers,  have  duties  and  responsi- 
bilities in  this  life,  duties  and  responsibilities  which  are 
not  to  be  delegated  to  others,  not  even  mothers,  for, 
as  Dr.  Hervey  has  recently  pointed  out,  even  the  most 
unpromising  father  has  some  peculiar  ability,  and  his 
reward  must  come,  I  suppose,  when  he  hears  his 
child  say:  "Father  can  do  that  better  than  mother." 
.Differing,  however,  from  most  prominent  men, 
Eugene  Field  inherited  his  mentality  and  his  great 
fondness  for  children  from  his  father,  who  was  a  man 


160  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

of  ripe  intelligence  and  great  tenderness.  What 
Field's  mother  might  have  been  to  him  he  never  knew, 
for  she  passed  away  when  he  was  very  young,  leaving 
as  a  heritage  to  her  son  but  the  sweetest,  the  faintest 
recollection,  which,  however,  was  sufficiently  strong  to 
inspire  him  in  after  years  to  write  that  tender  little 
poem  running: 

"How  fair  you  are,  my  mother. 
Ah,  though  'tis  many  a  year 
Since  you  were  here, 
Still  do  I  see  your  beauteous  face, 
And,  with  the  glow  of  your  dark  eyes 
Cometh  a  grace  of  long  ago." 

Though  Field  had  but  the  slightest  recollection  of 
his  mother,  and  the  most  vivid  remembrance  of  his 
father,  to  whom,  as  I  have  said,  he  was  indebted  for 
his  mentality  and  the  very  nature  of  his  feelings  with 
respect  to  children,  it  has  always  seemed  pathetic  to 
me  that  amid  all  his  beautiful  effusions  to  sweet- 
hearts, friends,  mother,  brother,  aunt,  wife  and 
children,  not  the  single  line  of  prose  or  poetry  did  he 
ever  write  or  dedicate  to  his  father.  Nor  is  this  to  be 
taken  as  a  lack  of  respect  or  a  lack  of  affection,  but, 
rather,  as  following  out  the  line  pursued  in  general 
by  the  poets,  the  painters,  the  philosophers,  the  his- 
torians and  the  ballad-makers.  It  may  be  urged  in 
extenuation  of  this  that  father  is  not  so  romantic  a 
figure,  not  so  inspiring  a  creation  as  mother;  but  be 
that  as  it  may,  I  shall  always  think  that  it  is  simply  a 
conspiracy,  conscious  or  unconscious,  on  the  part  of 


THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW-  161 

the  elect  of  the  world  to  deprive  father  of  his  just 
dues,  to  which  father,  somehow,  has  a  very  heroic  way 
of  submitting  and  will  submit,  I  suppose,  until  the 
end  of  time.  From  his  father,  too.  Field  inherited 
his  love  of  rhythm  and  prose  invention,  for  the  elder 
Field  was  wont  to  gather  scores  of  children  about  him 
and  hold  them  entranced  by  the  narration  of  strange 
and  fantastic  tales  of  original  make.  He  would  also 
play  to  the  children  upon  the  violin.  From  which  of 
his  antecedents  Field  inherited  his  love  of  mischief — 
for  mischievous  he  was — his  quaint  way  of  regarding 
most  things  humorously,  I  do  not  know.  But  I  do 
know  that  it  became  so  much  a  second  nature  to  him 
that  later  on  when  his  reputation  for  pathos  grew  and 
he  felt  it  incumbent  upon  him  to  assume  a  serious- 
ness,— often  I  think  when  he  felt  it  not, — I  have 
more  than  once  caught  his  eye  in  the  midst  of  the 
effort  and  we  have  laughed  outright. 

Many  years  ago,  when  by  standing  on  tip-toe,  I  had 
begun  to  peep  over  the  line  which  marks  the  distinc- 
tion between  being  known  and  unknown  in  the  pro- 
fession of  my  choice,  I  met  Eugene  Field.  It  was  a 
happy  meeting  for  me,  and  the  friendship  which  fol- 
lowed brought  me  great  joy.  I  like  to  think,  too,  that 
it  brought  no  displeasure  to  Field.  It  was  a  happy 
time  to  meet  such  a  man,  and  it  was  Field's  fate  and  an 
important  part  of  his  mission  in  life,  I  think,  to  come 
in  contact  with  young  men,  that  he  might  incite  their 
ambitions  and  strengthen  their  resolutions.    There  is 

with  most  young  men  a  crucial  period  of  existence 
11 


162  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

when,  having  made  some  progress  in  the  world,  a 
little  leisure,  either  for  good  or  evil  employment, 
comes  to  them.  Guided  by  some  unerring  instinct, 
Field  would  discover  many  of  these  young  men,  just 
as  he  would  march  into  a  strange  bookstore,  and 
instinctively,  intuitively — I  almost  said  instincttui- 
tively — march  up  to  the  counter  containing  the  rarest 
volumes,  and  then  a  few  days,  a  few  weeks,  under  the 
spell  of  Field's  personal  magnetism,  which  was  very 
great,  and  these  young  men  would  imbibe  enough 
literary  enthusiasm  to  last  a  decade,  aye,  a  life-time. 
A  keen  judge  of  human  nature.  Field  seldom  bothered 
with  those  who  manifested  uninteresting  traits,  but 
no  trouble  was  too  great  for  Field  to  take  for  any  man, 
woman  or  child  for  whom  he  conceived  a  fondness. 
His  recommendations  of  books  to  read,  though  some- 
times extraordinarily  varied  at  first,  according  to  the 
individual  whose  tastes  were  to  be  moulded,  his 
recommendations  were  always  leavened  with  the 
suggestion  of  a  volume,  the  importance  of  which  was 
significantly  impressed,  so  that  one  would  hasten  not 
only  to  own  but  to  read  and  to  digest  the  volume 
recommended,  and  thus  step  by  step,  little  by  little, 
would  Field  lead  his  friend  out  of  the  darkness  into 
the  light  of  the  world's  great  books,  to  the  best  books 
by  the  best  authors,  to  the  incomparable  delights,  to 
the  Elysian  fields  of  literature.  Nothing  in  Field's 
life  so  became  him,  nothing  was  of  more  importance 
aside  from  his  literary  skill,  than  the  splendid  pioneer 
work  he  did,  and  did  from  sheer  love  of  the  thing,  in 


THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW.  163 

developing  in  others  the  taste  for  reading,  in  mould- 
ing lovers  of  literature  out  of  material  oftentimes  of 
the  most  unpromising  character.  I  speak  feelingly 
of  the  unpromising  material,  for  I  was  perhaps  Field's 
most  unpromising  pupil.  To  be  able  to  help  the 
world  to  a  proper  appreciation  of  the  pleasures  of 
literature,  to  direct  others  to  thoughts  that  breathe 
and  words  that  burn,  is  ample  excuse  for  existence. 
Even  to  try  to  do  this  is  much,  but  to  make  a  practice 
of  it,  as  Eugene  Field  did,  by  directing  one's  thought 
or  one's  attention  to  this  word  or  that  idea,  as  for 
example,  the  importance  of  the  adverb  in  Lincoln's 
Gettysburg  speech,  "That  we  here  highly  resolve;" 
or,  again,  pointing  out  the  imaginative  quality  of 
Chaucer's  lines 

"Up  rose  the  sun  and  up  rose  Emily" — 
to  do  this,  I  say,  as  Eugene  Field  did  it  throughout 
his  life,  and  love  to  do  it,  was  genius,  absolute  genius, 
most  philanthropically,  most  unselfishly  applied. 

It  is  said  that  the  desire  is  common  with  most 
people  to  know  not  only  what  a  great  writer  has 
written,  but  of  what  nature  is  the  man  who  has  pro- 
duced such  attractive  material,  and  the  greater  the 
distinction,  the  greater  the  contrast  between  the  two, 
the  greater  the  interest.  Eugene  Field  and  his  work 
form  so  many  contrasts  that  interest  in  the  man  and 
in  the  artist  should  never  flag.  As  an  illustration  of 
this  let  me  tell  you  of  an  anecdote  characteristic  of 
Field's  humor,  his  frankness  and  his  modesty.  When 
he  was  connected  with  the  Denver  Tribune  and  in 


164  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

receipt  of  a  very  small  income,  he  was  one  day  in- 
vited by  a  man  of  great  wealth  to  an  elaborate  dinner. 
Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  it  was  midwinter,  one 
of  the  many  luxuries  provided  for  the  guests  was  a 
large  glass  bowl  of  luscious  strawberries;  these  were 
passed  to  the  guests, who  helped  themselves.  When 
the  bowl  came  to  Field  he  pushed  it  gently  aside 
and  the  astonished  host  noticing  the  motion  said, 
"Why,  what's  the  matter.  Field  .?  Don't  you  like 
strawberries  ?"  and  he  said,  "Oh,  yes,  I'm  very  fond 
of  them,  but  I'm  afraid  it  would  spoil  my  appetite 
for  prunes." 

One  cannot  fail  to  be  interested  in  the  type  of 
character  so  unusual  that  it  could  introduce  so  im- 
portant a  personage  as  the  Hon.  Carl  Schurz  to  a 
vast  political  assemblage  under  a  misapprehension. 
It  happened  much  after  this  fashion:  When  Field 
was  on  one  of  the  St.  Louis  papers  he  was  delegated 
as  a  reporter  to  accompany  Mr.  Schurz  on  a  political 
stumping  tour  through  Missouri.  At  one  of  the  places 
where  the  eminent  gentleman  was  to  speak  the  man 
who  was  to  introduce  him  failed  to  put  in  an  appear- 
ance and  Field  was  asked  to  make  the  introduction. 
Advancing  instantly  to  the  front  of  the  platform, 
thrusting  his  hand  into  his  bosom  which  he  puffed 
out  in  a  super-dignified  manner,  he  said,  with  a  strong 
German  accent,  "Laties  and  chentlemen,  I  haf  such 
a  sefere  kalt  tonight  that  I  can't  speech,  but  I  haf 
te  pleasure  for  to  introduce  to  you  the  eminent 
journalist,  my  frent,  Mr.  Eugene  Field."    It  is  said 


THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW.  165 

that  Mr.  Schurz  had  some  difficulty  in  explaining  the 
matter  to  the  audience. 

One  marvels  all  the  more  at  this  if  he  takes  into 
consideration  that  Field  at  that  time  was  almost 
wholly  unknown.  Some  years  ago  when  that  wave  of 
imitation  astheticism  swept  over  the  country  and  we 
grew,  or  pretended  that  we  grew,  very  fond  of  stained- 
glass  attitudes  and  sun  flowers  and  such,  Field  had 
great  fun  at  the  expense  of  the  apostle  of  that  cult. 
At  Kansas  City,  I  believe  it  was,  where  the  apostle 
was  announced  to  appear,  just  before  his  entrance 
into  the  city  Field  garbed  himself  in  imitation  of  the 
gentleman,  with  velveteen  clothes  and  a  large  sun 
flower  in  his  button-hole  and  a  Tam  O'Shanter  velvet 
cap,  and  in  an  open  barouche  paraded  through  the 
town  bowing  right  and  left  to  the  astonished  multi- 
tude. 

Now  contrast  those  foolish,  those  boyish  pranks 
with  Field's  "Little  Boy  Blue,"  which  first  brought 
him  recognition  as  a  poet: 

"The  little  toy  dog  is  covered  with  dust, 

But  sturdy  and  stanch  he  stands; 
And  the  little  toy  soldier  is  red  with  rust, 

And  his  musket  moulds  in  his  hands. 
Time  was  when  the  little  toy  dog  was  new, 

And  the  soldier  was  passing  fair; 
And  that  was  the  time  when  our  Little  Boy  Blue 

Kissed  them  and  put  them  there. 

"Now,  don't  you  go  till  I  come,"  he  said, 

"And  don't  you  make  any  noise!" 
So,  toddling  off^  to  his  trundle-bed. 


106  I'H^  LIBERAL  CLUB 

He  dreamt  of  the  pretty  toys, 
And,  as  he  was  dreaming,  an  angel  song 

Awakened  our  Little  Boy  Blue — 
O!  the  years  are  many,  the  years  are  long, 

But  the  little  toy  friends  are  true  I 

Aye,  faithful  to  Little  Boy  Blue  they  stand, 

Each  in  the  same  old  place — 
Awaiting  the  touch  of  a  Httle  hand. 

The  smile  of  a  little  face; 
And  they  wonder,  as  waiting  these  long  years  through 

In  the  dust  of  that  Httle  chair. 
What  has  become  of  our  Little  Boy  Blue, 

Since  he  kissed  them  and  put  them  there." 

Now  contrast  that  again  with  Field's  "Biblio- 
maniac's Prayer,  a  composition  which  has  delighted 
and  delights  the  booklovers  of  two  hemispheres  and 
has  crowned  Field  one  of  the  king-singers  of  biblio- 
mania. 

"Keep  me,  I  pray,  in  wisdom's  way 

That  I  may  truths  eternal  seek; 
I  need  protecting  care  to-day, — 

My  purse  is  light,  my  flesh  is  weak. 
So  banish  from  my  erring  heart 

All  baleful  appetites  and  hints 
Of  Satan's  fascinating  art. 

Of  first  editions  and  of  prints. 
Direct  me  in  some  godly  walk 

Which  leads  away  from  bookish  strife. 
That  I  with  pious  deed  and  talk 

May  extra-illustrate  my  life. 

But  if,  O  Lord  it  pleaseth  Thee 
To  keep  me  in  temptation's  way, 


THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW  167 

I  humbly  ask  that  I  may  be 

Most  notably  beset  to-day; 
Let  my  temptation  be  a  book, 

Which  I  shall  purchase,  hold,  and  keep, 
Wheron  when  other  men  shall  look. 

They'll  wail  to  know  I  got  it  cheap. 
Oh,  let  it  such  a  volume  be 

As  in  rare  copperplates  abounds, 
Large  paper,  clean,  and  fair  to  see, 

Uncut,  unique,  unknown  to  Lowndes." 

Now  contrast  that,  again,  with  Field's  "Good-by — 
God  Bless  You!" — a  composition  in  which  he  shows 
not  only  his  pathos,  but  his  love  of  the  well  of  English 
undefiled : 

"I  like  the  Anglo-Saxon  speech 

With  its  direct  revealings; 
It  takes  a  hold,  and  seems  to  reach 

Way  down  into  your  feelings; 
That  some  folk  deem  it  rude,  I  know, 

And  therefore  they  abuse  it; 
But  I  have  never  found  it  so, — 

Before  all  else  I  choose  it. 
I  don't  object  that  men  should  air 

The  Gallic  they  have  paid  for. 
With  "Au  revoir,"  "Adieu,  ma  chere," 

For  that's  what  French  was  made  for. 
But  when  a  crony  takes  your  hand 

At  parting,  to  address  you. 
He  drops  all  foreign  lingo  and 

He  says,  "Good-bye — God  bless  you!" 

This  seems  to  me  a  sacred  phrase. 

With  reverence  impassioned, — 
A  thing  come  down  from  righteous  days^, 

Quaintly  but  nobly  fashioned; 


168  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

It  well  becomes  an  honest  face, 

A  voice  that's  round  and  cheerful; 
It  stays  the  sturdy  in  his  place 

And  soothes  the  weak  and  fearful. 
Into  the  porches  of  the  ears 

It  steals  with  subtle  unction, 
And  in  your  heart  of  hearts  appears 

To  work  its  gracious  function; 
And  all  day  long  with  pleasing  song 

It  lingers  to  caress  you, — 
I'm  sure  no  human  heart  goes  wrong 

That's  told  "Good-by — God  bless  you!" 

I  love  the  words — perhaps  because 

When  I  was  leaving  Mother, 
Standing  at  last  in  solemn  pause 

We  looked  at  one  another, 
And  I — I  saw  in  Mother's  eyes 

The  love  she  could  not  tell  me, — 
A  love  eternal  as  the  skies, 

Whatever  fate  befell  me; 
She  put  her  arms  about  my  neck 

And  soothed  the  pain  of  leaving 
And  though  her  heart  was  like  to  break, 

She  spoke  no  word  of  grieving; 
She  let  no  tear  bedim  her  eye, 

For  fear  that  might  distress  me, 
But,  kissing  me,  she  said  good-bye, 

And  asked  our  God  to  bless  me." 

Now  contrast  that  again  v^ith  Field's  "Limitations 
of  Youth,"  a  composition  in  which  more  than  in  any 
other,  I  think,  he  enters  more  into  the  feelings  of  the 
boy,  the  real  boy  boy,  the  common-garden,  every-day 
boy: 


THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW  169 

"Td  like  to  be  a  cowboy  an'  ride  a  fiery  boss 
Way  out  into  the  big  an'  boundless  west; 
I'd  kill  the  bears  an'  catamounts  an'  wolves  I'd  come  across, 
An'  I'd  pluck  the  bal'  head  eagle  from  his  nest! 
With  my  pistols  at  my  side, 
I  would  roam  the  prarers  wide, 
An'  to  scalp  the  savage  Injun  in  his  wigwam  would  I  ride — 
If  I  darst;  but  I  darse  n't! 

I'd  like  to  go  to  Afriky  an'  hunt  the  lions  there, 

An'  the  biggest  ollyfunts  you  ever  saw! 
I  would  track  the  fierce  gorilla  to  his  equatorial  lair, 
An'  beard  the  canny bul  that  eats  folks  raw! 
I'd  chase  the  pizen  snakes 
An'  the  'pottimus  that  makes 
His  nest  down  at  the  bottom  of  unfathomable  lakes — 
If  I  darst;  but  I  darse  n't! 

I  would  I  were  a  pirut  to  sail  the  ocean  blue, 

With  a  big  black  flag  aflyin'  overhead, 
I  would  scour  the  billowy  main  with  my  gallant  pirut  crew 
An'  dye  the  sea  a  gouty,  gory  red! 

With  my  cutlass  in  my  hand 
On  the  quarterdeck,  I'd  stand 
And  to  deeds  of  heroism  I'd  incite  my  pirut  band — 
If  I  darst;  but  I  darse  n't! 

And,  if  I  darst,  I'd  lick  my  pa  for  the  times  that  he's  licked 
me! 
I'd  lick  my  brother  an'  my  teacher,  too! 
I'd  lick  the  fellers  that  call  round  on  sister  after  tea. 
An'  I'd  keep  on  lickin'  folks  till  I  got  through! 
You  bet!  I'd  run  away 
From  my  lessons  to  my  play. 
An*  I'd  shoo  the  hens,  an'  tease  the  cat,  an'  kiss  the  girls 
all  day — 
If  I  darst;  but  I  darse  n't!" 


170  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

And  now,  gentlemen,  if  I  may  be  allowed  just  one 
more  introduction  for  the  sake  of  showing  Field's 
remarkable  versatility,  compare  all  the  foregoing 
with  his  beautiful  "Dutch  Lullaby:" 

"Wynken,  Blynken,  and  Nod  one  night 

Sailed  off  in  a  wooden  shoe — 
Sailed  on  a  river  of  crystal  light, 

Into  a  sea  of  dew. 
"Where  are  you  going,  and  what  do  you  wish  ?" 

The  old  moon  asked  the  three, 
"We  have  come  to  fish  for  the  herring  fish 
That  live  in  this  beautiful  sea; 
Nets  of  silver  and  gold  have  we!" 
Said  Wynken, 
Blynken, 
And  Nod. 

The  old  moon  laughed  and  sang  a  song, 
As  they  rocked  in  the  wooden  shoe. 
And  the  wind  that  sped  them  all  night  long 

Ruflied  the  waves  of  dew. 
The  little  stars  were  the  herring  fish 
■   That  lived  in  that  beautiful  sea 
"  Now  cast  your  nets  wherever  you  wish 

Never  afeard  are  we,"  J 

So  cried  the  stars  to  the  fishermen  three!  m 

Wynken, 
Blynken, 
And  Nod. 

All  night  long  their  nets  they  threw 

To  the  stars  in  the  twinkling  foam — 
Then  down  from  the  skies  came  the  wooden  shoe, 

Bringing  the  fishermen  home; 
'T  was  all  so  pretty  a  sail  it  seemed 

As  if  it  could  not  be. 


I 


THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW  171 

And  some  folks  thought  'twas  a  dream  they'd  dreamed 
Of  sailing  that  beautiful  sea — 
But  I  shall  name  you  the  fishermen  three: 

Wynken, 

Blynken, 

And  Nod. 

Wynken  and  Blynken  are  two  little  eyes, 

And  Nod  is  a  little  head, 
And  the  wooden  shoe  that  sailed  the  skies 

Is  a  wee  one's  trundle-bed. 
So  shut  your  eyes  while  mother  sings 

Of  wonderful  sights  that  be. 
And  you  shall  see  the  beautiful  things 
As  you  rock  on  the  misty  sea, 
Where  the  old  shoe  rocked  the  fishermen  three: 
Wynken, 
Blynken, 
And  Nod." 

And  so,  gentlemen,  if  contrast  be  what  we  seek, 
contrast  what  please  us,  we  cannot  fail,  as  I  have  said, 
to  be  interested  in  a  type  of  man  so  unusual  that  he 
could  turn  from  the  most  mischievous  pranks  and 
write  a  baby's  lullaby,  a  lullaby  so  pathetic  that  it 
would  wring  tears  from  a  politician.  In  one  respect 
Field  was  like  most  people;  he  won  no  distinction, 
he  achieved  no  success  without  a  great  deal  of  labor. 
It  was  a  long  time  in  the  garden  of  life  before  Field 
got  a  bite  at  the  sunny  side  of  the  peach.  He  seemed 
always  to  have  wished  to  be  an  author,  except  at  such 
times  in  a  boy's  life  when  he  feels  he  is  destined  to 
become  a  great  actor,  and  Field  went  much  further 
in   this   respect   than   most   people   know.     With   a 


172  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

friend  he  played  through  many  of  the  smaller  towns 
of  Missouri  and  he  even  went  so  far  as  to  provide  him- 
self with  costumes  for  many  of  the  principal  Shake- 
spearean characters.  As  was  said  of  Thackeray, 
looking  back  at  Field  as  he  used  to  come  out  from  day 
to  day  in  the  Chicago  Daily  News,  it  can  scarcely  be 
said  that  we  realize  how  good  was  the  literary  food 
provided  for  our  daily  consumption.  But  gradually 
the  name  of  Field  began  to  be  buzzed  about  and  the 
deep  regret  now  is  that  he  could  not  have  lived  to  a 
greater  enjoyment  of  his  fame,  to  have  crowned  or 
surpassed  the  best  of  his  literary  productions.  I  am 
far  from  being  chauvinistic  enough,  far  from  being 
so  lost  in  idolatry  of  Field,  as  to  suppose  him  so  great 
a  man  as  Thackeray,  whose  reputation,  whose  fame  is 
world-wide,while  that  of  Field  is  as  yet  but  little  more 
than  national.  But  perhaps  no  greater  test  of  a 
man's  ability  is  to  be  made  than  by  comparing  him 
with  one  whose  powers  are  of  an  acknowledged  supe- 
riority, and  it  is  a  very  easy  task  indeed  to  trace  many 
points  of  resemblance  as  well  as  of  distinction  between 
Thackeray  and  Field.  To  begin  with,  their  hand 
writings  were  very  similar,  with  the  advantage  I 
think,  in  point  of  beauty,  with  Field.  Both  drew 
badly,  very  badly,  but  Field  never  dreamed,  as 
Thackeraydid,  of  makinga  career  as  an  artist.  Both 
wrote  odes  to  their  pens.  Field  never  wrote  a 
"Henry  Esmond"  or  a  "Vanity  Fair,"  but  then 
Thackeray  never  wrote  "A  Little  Book  of  Western 
Verse,"  or  "The  Love  Affairs  of  a  Bibliomaniac,"  but 


THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW  173 

Field  was  so  much  younger  when  he  died  than  Thack- 
eray that  one  feels  disposed  to  quarrel  with  Fate  in 
carrying  him  off  before  he  had  quite  rounded  out  his 
literary  career.  Known  chiefly  as  a  poet  by  those 
who  have  only  read  his  verse,  I  make  the  prediction 
that  Field's  prose  tales  will  outstrip  in  the  race  for 
fame  his  verse  and  will  be  quoted  as  models  of  style 
by  those  whose  opinions  command  following  and  re- 
spect. Field,  like  Thackeray,  had  no  great  power  of 
conversation;  neither  one  was  a  man  to  be  valued  or 
valuable  at  a  dinner  table  as  a  brilliant  conversational- 
ist; neither  shone  in  what  might  be  called  good 
society;  neither  courted  it,  both  had  very  little  time  to 
give  to  it  and  both  cared  very  little  about  it.  Perhaps 
they  felt,  as  Thoreau  expresses  it,  that  giving  one's 
afternoons  and  one's  evenings  to  society  is  like  selling 
one's  birthright  for  a  mess  of  pottage.  But  then 
Field  had  a  knack  of  imitation,  a  power  of  recitation 
that  was  quite  beyond  Thackeray,  an  accomplishment 
which  made  Field  exceedingly  popular  wherever  he 
went.  Field  detested  shams  just  as  Thackeray  de- 
tested snobs,  and  so  great  was  the  aversion  of  both 
to  humbug  of  every  kind,  that  both  laughed  it  down 
to  the  fullest  extent  of  their  capacity.  Anthony 
Trollope  says  that  Thackeray  saw  only  the  real  in  Hfe; 
Eugene  Field  saw  not  only  the  real  but  the  ideal. 
Thackeray  felt  that  more  good  could  be  accomplished 
by  exposing  the  vices  than  extolling  the  virtues  of 
mankind.  In  this  they  were  scarcely  in  accord;  for 
Field  felt  that  mankind  would  be  bettered  for  having 


174  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

the  purity  and  the  innocence  of  childhood  pathetically 
placed  before  him.  With  childhood  and  motherhood 
not  merely  idealized  but  fittingly  realized  Field  felt 
that  the  world  would  be  safe.  In  fine,  the  published 
writings  of  both  of  these  men  are  full  of  pathos,  full 
of  humor,  full  of  love  and  charity  and  tend  always  to 
truth,  honor,  manly  worth  and  womanly  modesty. 
The  chief  characteristic  of  Thackeray's  writings  is 
his  fancy;  so,  too,  is  fancy  that  of  Field's.  A  biog- 
raphy of  Thackeray  says  that  his  chief  personal  char- 
acteristic was  his  almost  feminine  tenderness;  and  this 
tenderness  Eugene  Field  exhibited  not  only  in  his 
writings  but  in  his  every-day  intercourse;  while  to  me 
his  chief  personal  trait  was  his  buoyancy  of  spirit,  his 
enthusiasm,  without  which  nothing  can  be  accom- 
plished. If  any  black  care  mounted  behind  the  horse 
Eugene  Field  rode — and  I  am  afraid  it  did — it  was 
known  and  exposed  to  few.  To  complete  the  picture 
of  similarity  between  Thackeray  and  Field  let  me  say 
that  with  their  work  incomplete  both  passed  from 
life  with  an  affection  of  the  heart. 

The  style  of  Eugene  Field's  writing  is  beautifully 
clear  and  lucid  and  always  grammatical.  He  has 
succeeded  in  conveying  to  the  reader  all  which  the 
reader  was  intended  to  receive  and  with  the  least 
possible  amount  of  diflSculty;  he  has  also  succeeded 
in  conveying  to  the  reader  all  that  the  writer  in- 
tended to  convey,  and  with  great  accuracy  and  pre- 
cision, so  that  according  to  the  best  authorities  he 
may  be  considered,  will  be  considered,  as  a  master  in 


THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW  175 

this  respect.  Whatever  he  says  the  reader  cannot 
fail  to  understand;  whatever  he  attempts  to  com- 
municate he  always  succeeds  in  conveying.  The 
greatest  that  have  written  could  do  no  more  and  the 
greatest  that  have  written  have  often  done  less. 

I  have  heard  Dr.  Horace  Howard  Furness,  the 
eminent  Shakespearian  scholar,  say  that  for  pure 
lilting  quality  nothing  quite  exceeded  Byron's  lines: 

"They  say,  dear  Moore,  your  songs  are  sung — 
Can  it  be  true  ?     You  lucky  man, — 
At  midnight,  in  the  Persian  tongue, 
Along  the  streets  of  Ispahan." 
and  it  must  be  confessed  they  do  lilt,  but  we  all  have 
our  views,  our  feelings  in  this  respect  and  the  names 
of  Byron  and  Moore  are  enough  to  incline  most  folks 
to  Dr.  Furness'  opinion;  but  I  think — and  I  have  the 
courage  to  say — that  Byron's  lines,  in  their  laughing, 
singing,  dancing,  rhythmic,  litling  quality  do  not  excel, 
even  if  they  equal,  the  same  qualities  in  Field's  "The 
Truth  about  Horace."     Listen  and  judge  for  your- 
selves : 

"It  is  very  aggravating 
To  hear  the  solemn  prating 
Of  the  fossils  who  are  stating 

That  old  Horace  was  a  prude; 
When  we  know  that  with  the  ladies 
He  was  always  raising  Hades, 
And  with  many  an  escapade  his 
Best  productions  are  imbued. 
*        *         *        * 

He  was  a  very  owl,  sir. 

And  starting  out  to  prowl,  sir, 


176  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

You  bet  he  made  Rome  howl,  sir, 

Until  he  filled  his  date; 
With  a  massic-laden  ditty 
And  a  classic  maiden  pretty 
He  painted  up  the  city, 

And  Maecenas  paid  the  freight!" 

Of  course,  I  have  read  purely  with  an  idea  of  bringing 
out  the  rhythmic  quality,  but  I  will  go  further  and  say 
that  the  subject  and  the  humorous  treatment  com- 
pare more  than  favorably  with  the  Byronic  quatrain. 

Of  Field  and  his  relation  to  children  I  have  spoken 
elsewhere,  but  children  were  always  fair  game  for 
Field  and  he  never  failed  to  make  as  deep  an  impres- 
sion upon  them  as  possible.  He  had  a  quaint  way  of 
placing  himself  on  a  level  with  their  little  minds  that 
was  as  winn  ng  as  it  was  skillful. 

He  was  a  man  who  mentally  drank  in  much,  filling 
his  fancy  daily,  hourly,  weekly,  with  what  he  saw, 
what  he  heard,  what  he  read,  and  then  pouring  it  all 
out  again  with  delightful  amplification.  One  of  the 
complaints  he  made  of  some  brother  humorists  was 
that  they  took  no  pains  to  read  in  order  to  supply 
themselves  with  material  to  prevent  self-exhaustion. 
But  Field  read  constantly  and  was  ever  perfecting  his 
style  from  the  best  literature  our  language  can  pro- 
duce. Not  long  since  I  had  a  letter  from  the  president 
of  Knox  College  telling  me  of  a  Spenser's  "Faerie 
Queen"  belonging  to  the  library  there,  the  fly-leaf  of 
which  bore  the  name  of  Eugene  Field,  together  with 
the  information,  in  his  own  handwriting,  that  he  had 


THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW  177 

Started  to  read  the  book  on  such-and-such  a  day  and 
had  finished  it,  I  think,  a  day  or  two  later.  So  that 
you  see  one  cannot  begin  too  early  nor  study  too  late 
if  he  wishes  to  become — as  Field  did  not — suddenly 
clever. 

Field  was  ever  proud  of  his  newspaper  reputation, 
and  justly  so,  for  it  was  through  the  medium  of  the 
press,  as  a  reporter,  as  a  special  writer,  as  an  editor, 
that  he  first  attracted  public  attention  and  received 
public  recognition.  I  heard  him  lay  great  stress 
upon  his  affection  for  the  work,  at  a  dinner  given  in 
his  honor  a  few  years  ago  at  Philadelphia,  a  dinner 
at  which  the  late  John  Russell  Young  presided. 

Another  very  graceful  and  exceedingly  elegant  ac- 
complishment of  Field's  was  his  letter-writing.  He 
had  a  fine  epistolary  style  and  the  collection  or  the 
publication  of  even  a  tithe  of  his  correspondence 
would  make  delightful  reading.  The  sight  of  his 
handwriting  on  the  outside  of  an  envelope  was  always 
a  foretaste  of  something  especially  good  inside,  and  I 
never  broke  the  seal  without  chuckling  in  anticipation 
of  the  delights  to  come. 

For  a  man  of  long  newspaper  experience,  during 
which  Field  must  have  had  much  beautiful  manu- 
script ruined,  for  he  furnished  immaculate  copy,  for  a 
man,  I  say,  whose  soul  must  have  been  greatly  tried 
in  this  respect.  Field  was  very  moderate  in  his  use  of 
strong  language.  But  as  for  oaths  that  were  so  rich 
that  they  were  really  nutritious,  as  was  said  of  Lan- 
dor's,  I  fear  Field  had  no  great  abhorrence. 
n 


178  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Let  me  give  you  one  more  example  of  Field*s  per- 
sonal, not  of  his  professional,  fun,  and  I  have  almost 
finished.  Not  long  since,  during  a  visit  to  Indianap- 
olis, James  Whitcomb  Riley  told  me  the  following  in 
connection  with  Field.  He  said,  '*When  Field,  Bill 
Nye  and  I  were  associated  in  the  lecturing  tour  we 
used  to  be  very  careful  what  we  said  to  each  other,  for 
an  opening  in  the  game  of  conversation  and  narration 
often  led  to  unexpected  results.  One  day,  as  we  were 
sitting  at  the  window  of  a  hotel  in  Broadway,  after  a 
prolonged  silence,  Field  suddenly  broke  out  with  the 
exclamation  or  declaration  that  he  had  had  a  strange 
dream  last  night;  upon  its  being  inquired  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  dream.  Field  said  *I  dreamt  I'd  been 
dead  fifty  years  and,  coming  back  to  life,  I  was  inter- 
viewing the  janitor  of  the  little  hall  in  the  country 
town  where  we  three  appeared  last  night  and  I  said 
to  the  janitor,  "I  suppose  you  have  seen  a  great  many 
kinds  of  entertainments  in  this  hall .? "  and  he  said, "Oh, 
yes;  during  a  connection  of  over  sixty  years  with  the 
place  it  is  only  natural  to  suppose  I  have  seen  a  great 
many  kinds  of  entertainments,  good,  bad,  and  in- 
diflPerent.'"  Then  said  Field,  *Do  you  remember  an 
entertainment  that  was  given  here  by  James  Whit- 
comb Riley,  Bill  Nye  and  Eugene  Field  .?'  whereupon 
the  janitor  broke  out  into  an  uncontrollable  fit  of 
laughter;  when  he  had  recovered  sufficiently,  he 
apologized  and  said  that  the  mere  mention  of  the 
name  of  Field  was  enough  to  convulse  him.  'What 
did  you  say  the  names  of  the  other  gentlemen  were  V 


.     THE  EUGENE  FIELD  I  KNEW  179 

he  said.  *Nye.  Nye.  Bill  Nye  and  James  Whitcomb 
Riley,  No/ he  said,  *  I  never  heard  of  them.  But  I 
wish  to  say  now  and  I  wish  to  lay  emphasis  upon  the 
declaration  that  that  Eugene  Field  was  the  most  ex- 
traordinary, the  most  brilliant  and  most  finished 
artist  that  ever  appeared  in  this  town.'" 

Of  Field  as  a  friend,  let  me  say,  those  of  us  who 
knew  him  nearly,  warmed  our  spirits  in  his  friendship 
as  most  people  warm  their  bodfes  at  a  fire.  No  mat- 
ter how  dark,  how  obscure  or  how  subterranean  the 
bookstore,  the  moment  Eugene  Field  stepped  into  it 
that  moment  it  was  ablaze  with  the  light  of  his  pres- 
ence. He  seldom  or  never  praised  the  performances, 
the  actions  of  his  friends,  but  he  ever  had  the  right 
word  of  encouragement  for  their  ambitions,  their  as- 
pirations. Nothing  could  be  more  welcome  to  a 
sensitive  soul  than  this;  nothing  could  be  more  subtly 
effective.  He  was  a  great,  good-natured,  talented 
fellow,  whose  kindnesses  and  courtesies  were  many 
and  frequent.  The  Eugene  Field  I  knew  was  a  fellow 
of  infinite  jest,  but  the  Eugene  Field  I  knew  was  also 
a  fellow  of  infinite  tenderness.  The  world  is  the 
sweeter  for  his  presence  in  it  and  no  greater  meed  of 
praise  could  be  accorded  him.  His  friends  have 
sometimes  thought  to  raise  a  statue  to  his  memory. 
The  finest  structure  in  brass  or  stone  that  could  be 
reared  by  the  deftest  hands  would  be  feeble  by  com- 
parison with  the  monument  he  himself  has  raised  in 
writing  "A  Little  Book  of  Western  Verse,"  "The 
Love  Affairs   of  a   Bibliomaniac,"   "The   Horatian 


180  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Odes"  and  the  "Little  Book  of  Profitable  Tales" 
containing  that  sweetest  of  all  short  stories,"  The  First 
Christmas  Tree." 

I  have  never  been  able  to  regard  Eugene  Field  as 
dead,  but  rather  as  one  who  is  visiting  Olympus  and 
becoming  charmed  with  the  conversation  of  the  Gods, 
perhaps  with  that  of  his  own  favorite  Horace,  he  has 
decided  to  tarry  yet  a  while.  If  we  grow  impatient 
at  his  delay  and  he  come  not  soon  to  us,  we  shall  go  to 
him. 


fixet  Dinner, 

November  29,  idOl. 

THE    CAUSE   OF    THE    BOER. 

COMMANDANT  W.    D.   SNYMAN. 

The  greeting  that  I  have  received  at  this 
banquet  here  this  evening  is  only  one  of  the  many 
greetings  that  I  have  received  of  the  American  people 
since  I  have  arrived  in  this  country.  I  can  assure 
you  that  when  I  received  your  invitation,  when  I 
reached  New  York,  coming  from  San  Francisco,  on  a 
mission  to  Holland  to  see  the  envoys  and  President 
Kruger,  no  man  was  more  ready  to  accept  that  kind 
invitation  than  I  was,  not  because  I  thought  that  I 
would  be  able  to  entertain  such  an  intelligent  audience 
as  I  knew  I  would  have  before  me  here  this  evening, 
but  because  I  have  that  cause  which  I  represent  in 
this  country  buried  deep  in  my  heart.  I  accepted 
that  invitation,  as  I  say,  not  with  the  object,  as  I 
knew,  that  I  would  be  able  to  entertain  you  as  far  as 
my  speaking  was  concerned,  because  I  would  like  you 
to  understand  immediately  that  having  to  address 
you  here  to-night  in  a  language  which  is  not  my  own, 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  difficulty;  but,  what  I  found 
everywhere  else  in  this  country,  I  know  I  will  find 
also  in  this  audience  tonight,  and  that  is  that  what- 


l82  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

ever  my  shortcomings  may  be  in  speaking  your  lan- 
guage, you  will  take  the  will  for  the  deed. 

I  feel  thankful  to  you,  gentlemen,  for  coming  to 
hear  what  I  have  to  say.  I  feel  thankful  to  you,  Mr. 
President,  for  the  way  that  you  have  received  us  at 
the  station  and  brought  us  to  the  hotel;  I  feel  more 
thankful  to  find  an  opposing  gentleman  here  to- 
night [Mr.  Brown]  who  also  wishes  to  say  a  few  words. 
Had  I  known  of  his  presence  here  I  would  naturally 
have  suggested,  considering  that  he  was  also  in  that 
part  of  the  country,  and  to  be  fair  and  just  toward 
my  opponents,  toward  those  people  whom  we  are 
fighting  in  South  Africa,  to  have  had  a  debate  so  that 
you  would  have  been  able  to  have  heard  both  sides 
of  the  question. 

But  let  me  immediately  say  that  I  have  nothing  else 
to  tell  you  except  that  South  Africa  is  devastated 
from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other.  There  are 
two  white  races  opposing  one  another  today  in  that 
same  country.  If  I  look  back  to  my  native  country — 
where  I  was  born,  my  father  and  my  ancestors  were 
born,  I  may  say  for  about  three  hundred  years  before 
that,  and  looking  back  in  the  way  that  I  am  now 
situated,  I  can  hardly  realize  that  I  can  still  give  a 
smile  when  I  meet  anybody  outside.  I  am  standing 
here  before  you  tonight  with  my  son,  who  is  with  me 
in  this  country.  Here  is  a  youngster  who  was  sixteen 
on  the  1 8th  day  of  July  last,  who  went  with  me  into 
that  struggle  and  left  that  country  at  the  suggestion 
of  President  Steyn,  to  come  to  America  and  lay  our 


THE   CAUSE   OF   THE   BOER.  183 

cause  before  the  American  people.  Now  I  know  that 
a  great  many  of  our  friends  here,  perhaps  whose  sym- 
pathies, by  relationship  as  well  as  otherwise,  are  with 
the  British  peop'e,  wi  I  differ  with  me  when  I  ex- 
plain to  them  what  I  think  has  been  the  cause  of  that 
fearful  struggle  which  is  now  existing  in  South  Africa. 
You  will  remember  that  South  Africa  is  divided  into 
various  territories.  You  know  that  there  is  the  Cape 
Colony,  which  is  the  British  Colony,  and  you  also 
know  that  there  is  a  colony  which  is  called  Natal 
which  occupies  the  southern  portion  of  South  Africa, 
and  that  there  are  two  republics  comprising  the 
Orange  Free  State  and  South  African  Republic. 
But  these  people  who  live  in  this  country,  especially 
the  people  of  the  nationality  that  I  represent,  are 
closely  allied  with  one  another,  and  so  you  will  find 
that  the  Dutch-speaking  population,  which  is  the 
majority  in  the  Cape  Colony,  are  people  who  are 
closely  allied  to  the  burghers  of  the  Orange  Free 
State  as  well  as  the  South  African  Republic,  and  you 
will  find  a  son  living  in  the  Cape  Colony  a  British 
subject  and  the  father  living  in  the  Orange  Free 
State — a  republic — a  burgher  of  that  state.  And 
therefore  you  can  quite  understand  that  in  sym- 
pathy the  Dutch-speaking  races  in  South  Africa  are 
in  unity  with  one  another.  But  we,  and  myself,  who 
lived  in  the  Cape  Colony,  who  were  British  subjects, 
enjoyed  the  government  of  that  country,  no  doubt 
because  we  were  carrying  on  a  government  under  our 
own  control,  but  at  the  same  time  we  were  loyal  to  the 


184  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

British  Crown,  providing  that  the  safety-valve  re- 
mained, which  we  as  a  nation  possessed  in  South 
Africa,  especially  those  of  us  in  the  British  terri- 
tories. The  existence  of  the  two  republics  was  always 
a  guaranty  of  good  faith  for  us,  as  people  living  in  the 
Cape  Colony  to  be  loyal  to  the  British  Crown;  as  I  say 
we  had  a  safety  valve  in  the  two  republics  beyond 
the  Vaal  and  the  Orange  River.  Now  you  will  all 
understand  that  "war,"  as  it  has  been  termed  by  one 
of  your  eminent  generals,  "is  hell."  And  my  dear 
friends,  war  in  South  Africa,  I  cannot  explain  in  any 
other  way  but  that  it  "is  hell"  to-day.  If  you  just 
for  a  moment  think  of  the  devastation,  of  thousands 
of  farms  being  burnt  down,  blown  up,  thousands  of 
women  and  children  taken  away  from  their  homes — 
concentrated  in  camps,  practically  speaking,  prison- 
ers, whose  liberty  has  been  taken  away,  and  to  be 
guarded  by  the  ordinary  "Tommy  Atkins"  as  he  is 
termed, — it  will  give  you  an  idea  what  the  present 
position  is  in  that  part  of  the  country. 

Now,  I  know  that  you  will  always  find  that  never 
are  the  people  who  have  been  responsible  for  a  war 
the  greatest  sufferers  in  that  particular  war,  but  it  is 
always  the  irresponsible  persons;  it  is  always  those 
who  are  not  responsible  for  any  diplomatic  part  that 
has  been  played  by  the  leading  parties  on  both  sides 
who  today  pay  the  penalty  of  that  war.  It  is  today 
the  widow  and  the  orphan  of  the  burgher  who  suffer 
and  who  pay,  as  it  were,  the  dearest  penalty  for  the 
existence  of  that  republic,  as  well  as  the  widow  and 


THE  CA  USE  OF  THE  BOER.  185 

the  orphan  of  the  British  soldier  in  England  and 
elsewhere.  And,  therefore,  as  I  say,  when  I  was 
asked  to  come  and  address  you,  I  particularly  wished 
to  make  it  understood  that  it  would  be  my  duty  to 
enter  into  what  has  happened  in  that  country  and 
explain  what  brought  about  this  catastrophe  as  it  is 
now  at  the  present  moment. 

I  explained  to  you  the  position  of  the  country,  how 
we  were  in  the  Cape  Colony  and  Natal,  as  well  as  the 
Orange  Free  State  and  the  Transvaal  Republic;  that 
in  the  Cape  Colony  the  majority  of  representatives 
in  the  Cape  Legislature  were  representing  the  Dutch- 
speaking  element  in  that  house  of  Assembly,  as  well 
as  people  closely  allied  with  the  burghers  of  the  two 
republics.  We  had  with  us  then  a  gentleman  who 
held  a  very  prominent  position,  and  I  am  now  going 
to  mention  to  you  the  name  of  Mr.  Cecil  John 
Rhodes,  who  was  the  first  recognized  premier  and 
leader  of  the  Dutch-speaking  Africanders  of  the  Cape 
Legislature.  He  was  a  man  who  allied  himself  with 
the  greatest  political  association  in  the  Cape  Colony, 
better  known  as  the  Africanderbund.  Mr.  Rhodes 
is  the  man  who  was  trusted  by  the  Africanders  to 
take  the  reins  of  the  government;  the  Africanders 
believing  that  he  was  the  only  man  and  the  best  man 
for  the  welfare  and  prosperity  of  all  concerned,  a  man 
who  had  the  welfare  of  that  country  at  heart.  Being 
so  entirely  trusted  by  the  Dutch-speaking  Africanders, 
the  greatest  opposition  that  he  had  during  his  reign 
of  office  as  Prime  Minister  of  the  Cape  Colony,  eman- 


186  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

ated  from  the  ultra-Jingo  party.  Everybody,  as  I 
say,  trusted  him  and  looked  upon  him  as  the  great 
man  to  take  the  reins  of  government  of  the  country, 
and  so  trusted  was  he  by  people  who  were  closely 
in  relations  with  the  people  of  the  two  republics, 
that  no  man  knew  what  calamity  was  over  the  coun- 
try until  all  of  a  sudden  came  the  outbreak  of  the 
Jameson  Raid.  Everyone  was  at  peace.  I  still  re- 
member living  on  my  farm  as  a  farmer  the  night 
before,  the  eve  of  the  New  Year's  day,  when  we  were 
going  to  have  our  sports;  we  were  all  together,  every- 
one thinking  that  the  world  was  at  peace, — the  next 
morning  the  telegraph  wires  were  launching  through 
the  country  the  announcement  that  Dr.  Jameson  had 
crossed  the  borders  with  450  men,  with  the  object  of 
overthrowing  the  republic  and  annexing  it.  By  whom 
the  raid  was  inspired  I  could  not  say  at  that  moment 
— but  when  this  matter  was  investigated,  it  was  dis- 
covered that  the  Prime  Minister  of  the  Cape  Colony, 
Mr.  Cecil  John  Rhodes,  the  one  man  who  had  the 
the  entire  confidence  of  the  Dutch-speaking  Afri- 
canders in  the  Cape  Colony,  was  the  prime  mover. 
He  had  used  his  official  capacity  as  Prime  Minister  of 
the  Cape  Colony;  and  he  was  the  instigator,  he  was  the 
man  who  got  Dr.  Jameson  to  come  with  his  armed 
force  into  the  state.  Hence,  the  immediate  division 
between  the  two  races  in  South  Africa.  Here  was  a 
friendly  state  broken  into  by  armed  men,  as  I  say 
with  the  object  of  overthrowing  it,  for  no  other  cause 
except   what    they    themselves    explained — that     it 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  187 

was  to  assist  and  help  the  suffering  women  and  chil- 
dren of  Johannesburg. 

Now,  gentlemen,  let  us  for  a  moment  look  back  at 
that  Jameson  Raid,  I  am  not  going  to  dwell  very 
much  upon  that,  because  I  know  it  is  ancient  history 
to  you.  But  what  I  have  learned  from  history,  I  find 
illustrated  today — that  whenever  a  people  is  oppressed 
by  a  government,  it  is  never  necessary  to  hire  those 
people  to  revolt  against  that  government;  every 
man  will  take  such  measures  as  lie  in  his  power  and 
revolt  against  that  government  without  being  re- 
munerated by  his  own  party  to  do  such  an  act.  And 
we  were  told  that  these  people  were  oppressed  in 
Johannesburg  by  the  Transvaal  Government;  that 
they  had  no  rights,  that  they  had  received  no  justice 
and  that  consequently  it  was  a  movement  which 
was  started  by  Mr.  Rhodes  and  Dr.  Jameson  with  the 
object  of  revolting  against  the  South  African  Re- 
pubHc.  But  what  do  you  think  of  the  Uitlander  pop- 
ulation, when  I  tell  you  tonight  that  not  a  man  of 
them,  not  a  soul  in  Johannesburg,  would  accept  any  of 
those  guns  and  ammunition  which  were  served  out  to 
them  unless  they  were  paid  the  nice  little  sum  of 
twenty-one  shillings  a  day  .?  None  of  these  gentlemen 
who  tell  the  world  that  they  were  oppressed  by  that 
government  would  accept  arms  from  the  Relief  Com- 
mittee which  they  appointed,  nor  would  they  fight 
at  the  very  moment  at  which  they  were  oppressed 
unless  they  were  paid  the  nice  little  sum  of  twenty 
one  shillings  a  day.     How  was   Dr.  Jameson,  when 


Its  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

within  eighteen  miles,  to  approach  Johannesburg? 
They  didn't  know  him;  they  didn't  go  and  ask  him. 
They  received  the  nice  little  remuneration  of  21  shil- 
lings a  day,  but  none  of  them  went  out  to  help  him  to 
get  into  Johannesburg. 

That  is  to  point  out  to  you  immediately  how  this 
matter  was  cooked  up  and  worked  up  as  a  farce.  Mr. 
Rhodes  was  a  clever  man,  an  able  man;  he  saw  that  his 
raid  was  a  mistake;  he  saw  that  he  had  been  working 
on  his  own  account;  and  that  Kruger  did  a  very  wise 
thing  in  handing  these  people  over  to  the  British 
Government,  so  that  they  might  be  punished  by  the 
very  government  which  he  had  claimed  that  hs  was 
assisting.  Mr.  Rhodes  was  obliged  to  turn  his  de- 
signs in  another  direction.  And  so  you  will  find, 
that  with  this  sore  in  that  country,  that  with  every 
one  with  suspicion,  with  each  of  the  two  white  races 
attached  to  one  side  or  the  other,  that  in  1898  this 
great  petition  of  the  21,000  signatures  was  brought 
from  the  Republic  appealing  to  the  British  Govern- 
ment, asking  that  the  wrongs  of  these  people  should  be 
redressed. 

Now  what  do  you  find  ?  On  what  do  they  base 
their  argument  ?  That  they  as  a  people  lived  in 
that  country;  that  they  were  being  taxed  in  that 
country  and  that  they  had  no  voice  in  the  gov- 
ernment of  that  country.  Very  well  put;  it  was  a 
very  nice  way  of  describing  that  petition.  Well 
now,  just  let  us  look  at  the  position  of  affairs  before 
that  Jameson  Raid,  and  at  what  had  happened  in 


THE  CAUSE  OF   THE  BOER  189 

that  country.  You  all  remember  that  in  1881  the 
very  same  people  of  the  South  African  republic  had 
to  take  up  arms  to  get  back  their  independence  and 
their  freedom,  which  were  dear  to  them.  After  the 
independence  was  granted  to  the  Boers  and  Kruger's 
Government  was  established  in  1885,  Johannesburg 
was  discovered  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  and  richest 
gold  fields  in  the  world.  In  1888  a  rebellion  broke 
out  in  the  northeastern  part  of  the  South  African 
Republic,  and  the  laws  of  that  country  were  then 
that  every  man  who  lived  in  Johannesburg  immed- 
iately became  a  burgher  of  the  state  and  that  he 
might  be  called  on  by  the  government  to  defend  when- 
ever that  government  and  its  country  were  threatened 
with  any  danger.  So  Johannesburg  in  1888  had 
40,000  inhabitants,  and  when  the  field  cornet  or 
commander,  according  to  the  laws  and  customs  of 
that  state,  wanted  400  men  to  assist  the  other  burgh- 
ers to  repel  this  rebellion  on  the  part  of  a  native  chief 
who  was  murdering  women  and  children,  these  resi- 
dents flatly  refused  to  serve.  Here  was  President 
Kruger  confronted  by  a  barbarous  native  chief  making 
raids  into  his  country  and  when  Kruger  called  upon 
his  people  who  lived  in  this  country  to  assist  him,  by 
giving  their  share  of  burghers,  the  aid  was  abso- 
lutely refused.  So  it  was  that  he  was  obliged 
either  to  confront  civil  war  in  Johannesburg,  or  else  to 
leave  these  people  entirely  alone  and  fight,  as  he 
afterwards  did,  a  native  chief  with  the  aid  of  his 
own  people,  who    struggled   and  fought    and    paid 


190  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

dearly  in  blood  for  that  country  which  they  loved. 
Now,  before  I  explain  to  you  a  little  further;  these 
very  people  in  Johannesburg,  were  they  satisfied  that 
they  had  scored  on  the  government  of  the  country  ? 
No.  They  held  public  meetings  in  Johnannesburg,  at 
various  places,  and  I  happened  myself  to  be  at  one 
where  a  gentleman  who  was  an  intimate  friend  of 
mine  addressed  an  audience  of  about  five  thousand 
men  and  he  said,  "They,"  (meaning  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  Transvaal),  *'want  us  to  forswear 
our  allegiance  to  the  British  Crown  and  swear  alle- 
giance to  the  South  African  government.  Gentle- 
men, I  ask  you,  is  not  that  against  the  traditions  of 
the  Englishman  to  swear  against  the  allegiance  of  his 
own  country  and  swear  allegiance  to  another  gov- 
ernment?" They  shouted  as  one  man,  "Never!" 
and  started  singing, 

"Rule   Britannia!    Britannia,   rule   the   waves; 
Britons  never  will  be  slaves." 

Now  just  look  at  this  again.  Here  was  a  president 
of  a  state  with  a  handful  of  burghers;  here  were  40,- 
000  inhabitants,  the  number  growing  larger  and 
larger  every  day,  and  when  these  people  were  called 
to  assist  the  government  they  refused  point-blank  and 
said  that  they  would  not  assist  and  that  they  would 
not  become  burghers.  I  ask  you,  as  sensible  men, 
to-night,  don't  you  think  that  it  was  only  right  that 
Kruger  and  his  Volksraad  should  change  the  law  to 
such  an  extent  that  every  man  should  first  prove 
himself  to  be  a  true  citizen  of  his  state  before  that 


THE  CAUSE  OF   THE  BOER  191 

State  would  give  him  political  rights  ?  The  dispute 
was  concerning  a  difference  of  only  about  five  or  six 
years  in  the  length  of  residence  required,  and  the 
object  of  this  war  is  to  overthrow  these  states  and 
ruin  their  independence.  Now,  I  think  I  have  ex- 
plained to  you  why  the  law  was  changed,  why  it  was 
made  to  require  fourteen  years' residence  and  how  the 
present   quarrel   arose. 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  objection.  This  opposition 
used,  as  I  told  you,  the  argument  that  it  paid  a  large 
amount  of  taxes  and  that  it  had  no  representation. 
Well,  I  have  explained  to  you  why  and  wherefore 
that  law  was  altered.  Now  let  us  just  look  and  not  go 
any  further;  let  us  just  look  for  a  moment.  When  the 
British  forces  attained  their  first  success  in  South 
Africa  in  this  war,  the  telegram  that  was  sent  by 
Lord  Roberts,  Commander  in  Chief  of  the  British 
forces,  after  he  was  successful  in  capturing  General 
Cronje  at  Paardeberg  with  4,000  men — what  was 
that  telegram  ?  Did  he  say  when  he  wired  to  his 
Queen,  "Allow  me  to  congratulate  you, your  Majesty; 
the  franchise  is  safe  for  your  subjects  in  this  coun- 
try?" No.  He  said,  "Allow  me  to  congratulate 
you;  Majuba  Hill  is  avenged,"  practically  letting 
the  world  know  that  he  was  not  fighting  as  com- 
mander in  chief  for  the  oppressed  Uitlander  people 
in  Johannesburg,  or  as  they  term  it,  for  the  franchise, 
but  that  he  came  as  commander  in  chief  to  fight  to 
avenge  a  catastrophe  that  fell  to  the  British  nation 
in  1881.     These  and  other  incidents  will  point  out  to 


192  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

you  that  they  are  all  fake  troubles  that  were  brought 
out. 

Now  I  know  that  when  I  argue  with  people  in 
various  ways  and  wish  to  point  out  to  them  that  this 
war  has  been  worked  up  with  an  object  of  overthrow- 
ing the  two  republics  and  annexing  that  country  to 
the  British  Empire,  a  good  many  gentlemen  will  say 
that  this  aim  is  contrary  to  the  freedom  and  the  great- 
ness of  the  British  nation.  I  thought  so,  too.  Never 
was  there  a  man  more  an  EngHshman  at  heart  than  I 
was;  never  was  there  a  man  who  lived  in  South  Africa 
who  thought  more  of  the  English  people  as  a  race 
than  I  did  myself.  And  although  I  have  been  dis- 
appointed, I  will  explain  later  on  that  I  have  still 
hope  that  our  freedom  will  come  from  Great 
Britain  itself.  But  what  I  wish  to  explain  to  you 
is  this:  that  when  I  saw  how,  in  every  way,  this  was 
forced  on  to  the  two  republics;  how  I  had  tried  in  the 
Cape  Colony  with  the  little  political  influence  that  I 
had,  to  side  with  the  progressive  party,  as  they  term 
them;  how  I  was  the  first  man  as  a  public  man  in  that 
country  to  forgive  Mr.  Rhodes  for  his  Jameson  Raid 
and  to  trust  him  again  a  second  time;  how  I,  as  a 
man  who  took  part  in  the  general  election  of  1899, 
taking  the  part  of  Mr.  Rhodes  and  his  compatriots, 
thinking  that  no  war  would  be  waged  against  the 
two  republics;  when  I  realize  all  this,  I  can  assure  you 
that  I  was  very  much  disappointed  at  the  outcome 
and  yet  I  was  one  of  those,  as  I  tell  you,  who  did  all 
that  they  possibly  could  in  petitioning  the  High  Com- 


THE  CAUSE  OF   THE  BOER  193 

missioner,  Sir  Alfred  Milner,  in  the  Cape  Colony,  and 
through  him  petitioning  the  Queen, trying  so  to  proceed 
through  him  and  through  other  diplomatic  means 
and  not  to  force  a  quarrel  between  the  British  people 
and  those  peope.  It  was  while  presenting  that  peti- 
tion that  I  saw  that  the  Governor  of  Cape  Colony 
was  there  more  as  a  delegate,  carrying  out  the  in- 
structions of  Chamberlain,  to  carry  out  the  project 
of  annexing  the  country.  So  I,  like  the  rest  of  my 
compatriots,  when  the  question  of  right  and  wrong 
weighed  on  my  mind,  took  my  position  irrespective 
of  what  the  consequences  would  be. 

And  so,  gentlemen,  as  I  have  pointed  out  to  you, 
when  a  man  knows,  as  I  knew,  the  strength  and 
greatness  of  the  British  nation,  how  strong  it  was, 
what  my  penalty  would  be  if  I  should  fall  into  its 
hands,  I  think  you  must  realize  that  such  a  man 
would  weigh  the  question  very  carefully  before  he 
would  give  himself  over  and  join  a  weaker  and  a 
smaller  party  to  fight  the  greatest  and  strongest 
power  in  existence.  And  here  I  stand  before  you 
branded  to-night  as  a  rebel  fighting  against  my  own 
government. 

Now  let  us  go  back  a  little  and  just  look  over  a 
few  of  these  accusations  that  have  been  made  against 
the  South  African  Republic.  Let  us  now  take,  for  in- 
stance, the  dynamite  monopoly,  as  it  is  termed. 
Here  you  will  find  a  question  which  has  been  raised; 
it  has  been  said  that  the  miner,  the  man  who  was 
working  taking  out  the  gold  in  Johannesburg,  had  to 

13 


194  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

pay  an  excessive  tax  on  account  of  the  monopoly  that 
was  on  the  dynamite  which  was  manufactured  in  that 
state.  Now,  you  will  find  that  the  difference  in  the 
cost  of  cases  was  first  twenty-five  shillings  to  twenty- 
seven  shillings,  as  against  the  imported  article  It 
was  called  a  monopoly.  All  that  you  can  call  it 
is  a  protective  duty  raised  against  the  imported 
article.  And  what  are  you  Americans  doing  here 
today  ?  Insisting  upon  protection  in  every  shape 
and  form  to  protect  your  own  industries  in  your  own 
state, — and  that  is  all  that  Kruger  did.  But  our  op- 
ponents knew  better  at  the  time  what  the  dynamite 
monopoly  meant  for  them  than  a  good  many  of  the 
Boers  themselves  in  that  state  for  this  reason:  Kruger 
knew  that  this  "monopoly"  was  the  foundation  and 
keystone  of  his  independence;  and  I  can  just  explain 
to  you  that  after  the  war  was  in  progress  for  about  six 
or  seven  months,  we  had  no  less  than  fifty-two  Arm- 
strong cannon  that  we  captured  from  the  British 
army  from  time  to  time,  and  if  we  had  not  had 
dynamite  manufactory  in  Johannesburg  and  Pretoria 
then  I  tell  you  those  guns  would  be  useless,  but  having 
had  that  monopoly,  as  it  is  termed,  it  enabled  the 
government,  it  enabled  the  Boer  republics  to  manu- 
facture suflicient  ammunition  to  work  these  Arm- 
strong cannon  that  we  captured  from  the  English. 
Do  you  blame  Kruger  for  it  ?  That  was  one  way  of 
protecting  independence  by  the  dynamite  monopoly. 
And  you  have  again,  on  the  other  side,  been  told  as  a 
people — for  our  British  friends  through  their  litera- 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  195 

ture  have  sent  it  broadcast  through  the  world  and 
so  have  poisoned  the  mind  of  the  individual  reader — 
that  the  Boer  v^as  barbarous,  treacherous,  dirty  and 
unfit  to  govern  himself;  and  so  the  individual  reader 
never  questioned  the  question  of  right  and  wrong  of 
this  war;  when  this  war  broke  out  he  said,  **Well,  in 
the  interest  of  civilization  it  is  well  that  England 
should  be  victorious."  Now,  I  do  not  think  that  I 
look  so  very  much  uncivilized  as  a  Boer.  I  asked  my 
friend  here  this  evening  if  he  did  not  have  a  differ- 
ent opinion  of  Boers  when  he  got  in  South  Africa 
coming  from  Canada,  from  the  opinion  he  had  of 
them  before.  Of  course  he  told  me,  "Not  if  I  met  a 
Boer  like  yourself."  Well,  I  am  sorry  that  his  opin- 
ion has  not  been  changed  because  I  think  that  those 
he  met  were  in  the  field  and  there  was  not  a  British 
soldier  in  the  field  who  looked  Hke  a  human  being. 
But  I  can  assure  you,  gentlemen,  that  we  in  that 
country  are  as  civilized  as  any  country  that  I  have 
had  the  pleasure  of  visiting  and  I  have  been  through 
a  good  many  of  them  now,  and  I  am  not  ashamed 
to  own  up  to  you  to-night  that  I  belong  to  an  unciv- 
ilized nation,  the  Boers  of  South  Africa.  (Applause). 
And  then  again,  you  have  heard  in  reference  to  the 
two  republics  and  their  attitude  toward  the  black 
races  in  that  country,  that  the  Boer  is  practically 
upholding  slavery.  This  statement  has  worked  its  way 
a  great  deal  into  the  minds  of  men  of  this  country 
where  I  have  been  conversing  with  men  in  regard 
to  religious  aspects  of  the  people.     That  is  one  of  the 


196  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

crudest  things  they  have  had  to  say  against  the  Boer 
of  South  Africa.  Now,  I  think  no  man  could  argue 
any  better  than  to  just  take  the  law  of  the  country  in 
its  form  as  it  stands.  Now,  what  do  you  find  it  to  be 
in  the  Orange  Free  State  ?  Total  prohibition  to  sell 
any  liquors  to  the  black  races  of  the  country.  I  dare 
say  my  friend  who  was  there  has  found  that  the  black 
races  in  South  Africa  are  like  children,  and  that  we 
have  already  exterminated  in  the  Cape  Colony  one 
race,  better  known  as  the  Hottentot  race,  and  that 
the  negro  races  in  that  country,  when  once  they  are 
allowed  to  take  hold  of  liquor,  do  not  know  where  to 
stop;  that  you  could  exterminate  them  in  ten 
years  if  yon  gave  them  liquor,  carte  blanche,  so  that 
they  could  consume  as  much  as  they  might  like. 
For  that  reason  the  Orange  Free  State  government 
passed  a  law  totally  prohibiting  every  one  from  selling 
to  any  black  man  a  drop  of  liquor,  unless  it  could  be 
proved  that  the  buyer  wanted  it  for  medicinal  pur- 
poses, and  you  will  find  in  the  Orange  Free  State  as 
well  as  in  the  South  African  republic,  that  no  black 
man  is  allowed  to  buy  a  glass  of  liquor  unless  it  is 
with  the  consent  of  his  employer.  What  do  you 
find  in  the  Cape  Colony .?  You  find  canteens  spread 
broadcast  from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other, 
right  at  the  doors  of  missionaries;  you  will  find  a 
church  built  on  one  side  and  a  canteen  on  the  other; 
you  will  find  one  native  convert  on  one  side  and  about 
five  or  six  hundred  native  drunkards  on  the  other, 
These  are  the  laws  of  the  English  colony,  govern- 


THt!  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOEB  197 

ment  under  English  rule,  compared  with  that  of  the 
two  republics.  Now,  I  think  that  this  should  do 
away  immediately  with  the  saying  that  we  are,  as  a 
people,  favoring  slavery. 

And  take  our  church,  which  is  the  greatest  and 
largest  church  in  South  Africa.  We  have  more  mis- 
sionaries working  amongst  the  black  races  than  any 
other  country  that  has  missionaries  in  that  territory; 
we  have  in  Zululand  more  missionaries  than  have  the 
French,  German,  American  and  English  countries, 
although  that  is  a  British  territory.  We  have  more 
missionaries  in  the  centre  of  Africa,  and  what  is  more, 
one  Sunday  in  every  month  is  set  apart,  throughout 
the  length  and  breadth  of  the  country,  as  a  day  of 
collection  for  mission  work  in  South  Africa  and 
amongst  the  native  races  of  that  country.  I  think 
that  this  will  prove  to  you  that  as  a  people  and  as  a 
government  the  two  republics  have  taken  the  matter 
in  hand  and  it  shows  what  they  have  even  given  from 
the  pocket  to  introduce  civilization  to  the  people;  it 
shows  that  this  accusation  of  favoring  slavery,  made 
against  them,  is  unfounded  and  incorrect. 

But  let  us  go  a  little  further.  Let  us  now  see  who 
are  the  Boers  of  South  Africa.  We  are  a  representa- 
tive people  of  various  nationalities.  You  will  realize 
this  when  I  tell  you  that  to-day  you  will  find  a  "Mur- 
ray" a  Boer  of  South  Africa,  you  will  find  an  "Ander- 
son" a  Boer  of  South  Africa,  you  will  find  a  man  of  an 
Irish  name  who  is  a  Boer  of  South  Africa, — and 
therefore  you  will  find  that  we  are  not  a  nation  built 


198  THE  LIBERAL  CLVB 

of  just  one  particular  sect;  but  are  raised  from  various 
peoples  who  have  taken  up  their  vocations  in  that  part 
of  the  w^orld,  and  consequently  I  consider  that  we, 
as  a  white  race  in  that  country,  are  as  good  as  any 
race  that  has  developed  itself.  But  now  let  us  look 
at  the  attitude  of  the  country.  This  war  has  been 
brought  about  with  the  object  of  annexing  that  coun- 
try which  entirely  belongs  to  the  people  who  held 
and  still  hold  it.  Take,  for  instance,  the  history  of 
the  Boers  since  the  trek  of  1835,  when  they  cleared 
out  Natal  and  annexed  it  and  colonized  it  and  civ- 
ilized it,  after  paying,  as  I  can  assure  you,  the  price  of 
blood  in  several  massacres  that  took  place,  where 
three  thousand  and  where  four  or  five  thousand 
women  and  children  were  slaughtered  and  battered 
to  pieces  in  one  night.  When  the  government  was 
nicely  estabhshed,  the  British  government  came  and 
annexed  it;  said  it  belonged  to  them.  The  Boers 
could  not  fight,  could  not  resist.  They  went  into  the 
interior  and  opened  up  the  South  African  Republic. 
In  1876  the  English  quietly  came,  took  down  the 
Boer  flag  and  hoisted  the  British  flag.  Some  of  the 
Boers  took  up  their  wagons  and  their  belongings  and 
went  farther  into  the  interior,  and  so  you  have  to-day 
a  little  settlement  called  Importa,  in  the  centre  of 
Africa;  but  those  who  went  lost  more  than  three- 
fourths  of  their  people  in  attack  upon  them.  When 
the  rest  saw  that  it  was  fruitless  to  go  farther  into  the 
country,  they  resisted,  fought  for  their  independence. 
It  was  through  the  noble  eff"orts,  through  the  great- 


THE  CAUSE  OF   THE  BOER  199 

ness  of  one  of  the  greatest  statesmen   in   England, 
Mr.  William  Gladstone,  that  they  were  successful, 
for  he  gave  that  government  of  the  Republic   back 
and  he  is   being  admired   by  every   Boer  in  South 
Africa  for  the  noble  deed  he  did.     Did  the  British 
lose    any    prestige  ?     No.     The    Boers  looked  upon 
them  v^ith  thankfulness.     The  idea  that  is  spread 
among  people  to-day  that  we  are  trying  to  drive  the 
British  out  of  the  country  as  a  race  is  absolutely 
untrue.     Gentlemen,  if  you  had  only  been  at  Pre- 
toria the  day,  when  after  the  famous  speech  of  Mr. 
Rhodes,  advising  the  concentration  of  forces  on  the 
frontier,  the  government  of  the  Transvaal  Republic 
saw  that  now  their  only  alternatives  were  either  to 
hand  over  the   country  to   the  British,  or  fight  for 
it — and    fight    at    once!     The   Volksraad    met    and 
deliberated,  there  were   about  20,000  men,  women 
and  children  in  Pretoria,  and  I  do   not   think  you 
could  see  a  dry  face.     They  knew  that  all  was   up, 
that  everything  had  been  done  that  could  be  done 
to  try  and  persuade  the  British  government  not  to 
concentrate  their  forces  on  the  frontier  and  not  to 
force  the  Boers  to  fight  them  for  their  country.   We 
knew  as  a  people  that  it  was  now  going  to  be  a  hope- 
less struggle,  but  decided, — just  as  your  forefathers  in 
this  country  did, — that  rather  than  be  a  party  to  any- 
thing  dishonorable,   and    give   up   what   really    be- 
longed   to   us,  we   would   fight  and  probably  be  ex- 
terminated as  a  race;  but  that  we  would  fight  for  our 
independence  and  freedom,  which  is  dear  and  sweet 


200  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

to  every  man  who  breathes  in  this  world.  (Applause.) 
So  you  will  find,  gentlemen,  that  those  people  that 
were  in  Pretoria  knew  what  was  going  to  be  the  ulti- 
mate result.  Every  man  there  settled  in  his  own 
mind  that  he  was  going  to  fight  for  it  and  that  he  was 
going  to  fight  for  it  as  long  as  he  lived. 

Now  the  question  arises  among  the  American 
people  today,  and  the  point  has  also  been  used  to  a 
great  extent  to  secure  sympathy  for  us  as  a  nation; — 
you  are  asked  to-day,  "What  is  the  use  of  keeping  on 
this  struggle  ?  The  ultimate  result  will  be  that  Great 
Britain  is  going  to  be  victorious,  and  consequently 
you  are  the  only  means  of  killing  your  women  and 
children  who  live  in  that  country."  Well,  gentlemen, 
American  people,  picture  your  prosperity  and  life  as  a 
nation  to-day;  then  just  think  for  a  moment  of  your 
own  history;  just  think  now  for  yourselves  when 
George  Washington  was  there  at  Valley  Forge  with 
his  men,  barefooted,  almost  naked — and  any  man 
can  go  out  this  evening  and  feel  the  climate  of  this 
country,  what  it  is  on  a  winter  night — suppose  that 
he  had  said,  "It's  all  up;  what's  the  use  ?"  You  can 
as  only  a  young  race  even  to-day  picture  what  calam- 
ity would  have  been  brought  to  you,  had  he  sur- 
rendered when  he  thought  it  was  all  up.  Had  he 
given  up,  I  think  that  you  would  have  gone  to  his 
grave  to-day  and  trampled  dust  on  it.  But  no,  it 
was  his  nobleness  in  those  most  trying  days;  he  stuck 
to  it;  and  although  you  got  a  little  assistance  from 
France,  yet  you  must  agree  with  me  that  it  was  the 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  201 

right-minded  Englishman  after  all,  who  was  against 
that  war,  who  foretold  it,  who  came  to  your  rescue 
and  brought  such  a  revolution  of  opinion  in  England 
that  you  are  to-day  having  that  freedom  and  that 
liberty  which  I  am  glad  to  say  is  enjoyed  by  every 
American  citizen  wherever  I  have  met  him.  And  it  is 
for  this  reason  that  to-day  the  Boer  of  South  Africa 
is  still  in  the  field,  keeping  on  that  struggle,  and  he 
will  keep  on  as  long  as  he  lives.  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
interviewing  my  old,  aged  President  in  Holland  a 
little  more  than  a  week  ago,  and  I  said  to  him,  "Now, 
here  you  are.  Of  course,  I  thought  to  come  and  see 
you  on  your  dying  bed,  and  I  am  glad  to  see  that  you 
are  looking  as  well  as  you  do."  He  said,  "Well,  I 
suppose  my  opponents  say  the  wish  is  father  of 
the  thought,  but,"  he  said,  "all  I  can  tell  you  is 
to  take  the  history  of  this  war,  you  see  how  that 
matter  arose,  how  that  confusion  among  the  burghers 
sprung  up,  how  they  fled  from  one  portion  of  the 
country  to  the  other  against  that  overwhelming  force 
of  the  British  and  yet  you  see  that  they  are  still  fight- 
ing to-day,"  and  he  said,  "I  want  you  to  remember 
as  a  Christian  that  right  is  might,  and  that  God  has 
shown  all  through  this  war,  this  great  struggle,  that 
He  is  on  our  side,  consequently  that  is  the  reason  that 
my  advice  will  always  be  to  fight,  to  keep  on  the 
struggle,  because  I  am  sure  in  my  mind  that  the  inde- 
pendence of  that  country  is  going  to  fall  to  its  proper 
owners,  and  they  are  the  Boers  of  those  two  repub- 
lics."    When  I  landed  here  in  New  York  I  made  the 


202  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

forecast,  when  the  people  asked  me  when  the  war  would 
be  over,  I  said,  "So  long  as  England  fights,  so  long 
the  Boer  will  fight."  And  here  to-night  I  repeat  it. 
I  think  if  you  will  follow  up  the  history  of  this  war 
in  South  Africa,  with  the  small  band  of  people  that  are 
still  in  the  field  fighting  today,  for  you  are  told  by 
the  British  forces  how  many  Boers  they  have  cap- 
tured and  how  many  they  have  killed  and  wounded 
and  how  many  are  prisoners;  if  you  will  think  of  this 
it  will  seem  to  you  a  remarkable  thing, — it  is  re- 
markable to  me — to  think  that  having  had  so  often 
that  information  that  the  war  is  practically  over,  the 
situation  still  requires  that  not  only  from  Great 
Britain  herself,  but  also  from  the  British  Colonies  re- 
enforcements  should  be  sent  to  fight  against  the  four 
small  bands  of  people  who  are  still  struggling  in  that 
country.  That  will  show  you  that  that  war  is  not 
over;  that  will  show  you  that  that  war  is  going  to 
be  a  war  much  longer.  With  this  argument  we  are 
appealing  to  the  British  people,  the  right-minded 
Englishman. 

Now,  speaking  about  our  women  and  children  in 
those  concentrated  camps,  I  know  that  you  cannot 
quite  understand  their  condition  from  what  I  can  tell 
you  in  a  few  words  tonight,  but  my  wife  wrote  me  a 
letter  which  she  got  through  in  some  mysterious  way 
the  other  day — I  hope  you  won't  give  me  away  when 
you  go  to  Canada,  [the  latter  remark  to  Mr- 
Brown];  but  anyhow  I  got  it,  and  I  am  not  sorry  to 
tell  you;  and  she  wrote  me  and  she  said,  "As  long  as 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  203 

you  live,  may  you  never  come  to  taste  what  I  am 
tasting  today."  Perhaps  from  that  sentence  you 
may  get  some  idea  of  what  suffering  and  agony  and 
death  rages  everywhere  in  the  South  African  Re- 
pubHcs  today. 

Now,  when  you  get  that  from  your  wife,  you  must 
be  an  awful  coward  to  be  preaching  surrender  when 
you  know  that  her  heart  is  farther  away  from  it  as 
she  suffers,  than  yours  is  at  this  present  moment. 
And  therefore  it  is  not  a  war  of  a  poHtical  agitation 
on  the  Boer  side,but  it  is  a  war  of  the  individual;  it  is  a 
war  of  every  burgher,  of  every  Boer  man,  of  every 
Boer  child  and  of  every  Boer  girl. 

But  let  me  for  a  moment  ask  myself  the  question, 
what  is  the  use  of  my  trying  to  solicit  sympathy  from 
you  American  people  }  Is  it  because  I  want  to  excite 
your  feelings  with  the  object  of  getting  you  to  plunge 
yourselves  into  war  with  Great  Britain  ?  Let  me  im- 
mediately inform  you,  no.  But  if  you,  as  a  nation,  if 
you  as  a  people  who  love  your  freedom  and  your  lib- 
erty, would  express  yourselves  openly  through  your 
Congress,  denouncing  that  war  in  South  Africa,  or 
appealing  to  Great  Britain,  I  tell  you,  I  assure  you — 
and  doing  so  I  perhaps  will  not  be  so  appreciated  by 
my  friend  here  [Mr.  Brown] — that  Great  Britain  will 
be  only  too  glad  to  know  what  your  true  feelings  are, 
and  to  stop  this  war;  she  will  be  only  too  glad  to  get 
out  of  this  fearful  mess  that  she  has  gotten  into,  and 
therefore  when  I  appeal  to  you,  it  is  not  an  appeal  to 
arms;  but  I  appeal  to  you  for  your  sympathy,  and  if 


204  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

you  people  think  that  our  cause  is  right  and  if  you 
think  it  is  just,  say  so  Hke  men,  and  I  tell  you  it  will 
help  us  a  great  deal.  I  have  been  through  this  coun- 
try— I  think  as  many  as  thirty-five  States, — and  I 
have  no  less  than  ten  governors  who  signed  petitions 
that  they  are  going  to  present  to  this  coming  Congress 
asking  Great  Britain,  through  the  American  people,  to 
try  and  stop  this  war  and  bring  it  to  a  termination. 
And  this  is  the  only  way  that  we  are  appealing  to  you 
people,  and  this  is  all  we  are  asking  for.  You  ask 
me  tonight,  "How  long  will  that  struggle  be  kept 
on?"  I  tell  you,  indefinitely;  as  long  as  England 
fights  us,  so  long  the  Boer  in  the  field  will  fight.  And 
you  will  ask  me,  "How  are  you  going  to  keep  up  your 
supplies  of  ammunition  and  arms?"  I  think  my 
friend  [Mr.  Brown]  can  explain  that  better  than  I  can, 
because  he  is  better  known  on  the  other  side  in  making 
up  the  accounts  of  how  much  guns  and  ammunition 
are  captured  from  time  to  time,  from  the  British 
(laughter);  all  I  can  tell  you  is  that  we  have  got  the 
supplies;  we  have  them  and  we  are  using  them,  and 
they  are  very  good  guns  and  ammunition,  too,  (Laugh- 
ter). But  what  I  want  to  point  out  is  to  have  you 
look  at  the  military  position  of  the  two  countries,  of 
the  two  peoples.  I  can  assure  you  that  I  must  pay  a 
tribute  of  respect  to  Mr.  Brown  here  tonight,  with 
the  forces  that  he  represented  on  the  British  side  and 
must  say  that  had  England,  her  whole  army,  been  like 
the  Canadians  and  the  Australians,  then  the  proposi- 
tion would  have  been  a  great  deal  more  difficult  for 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  205 

US  than  it  has  been  in  the  past.  (Applause.)  But  I 
think  that  those  forces  are  now  at  home — and  I  learn 
that  perhaps  five  hundred  or  six  hundred  are  going  to 
leave  next  v^^eek.  I  have  been  reading  of  a  thousand 
that  have  been  leaving  the  country  ever  since  I  have 
been  in  the  country;  they  have  not  gone  yet;  I  only 
hope  that  those  Canadians  vs^ill  come  to  their  better 
senses  and  not  go,  and  leave  England  to  fight  her 
struggle  herself;  she  ought  to  be  able  and  strong 
enough  to  do  so. 

Novi^,  the  question  of  military  operations.  Let  us 
compare  results — and  that  I  am  not  going  to  do  in 
any  boastful  v^ay  to-night, — I  am  going  to  put  practi- 
cal facts  before  you,  and  I  only  hope  that  my  friend 
will  acknowledge  them.  Let  us  now  look  at  the  two 
opposing  parties,  and  what  do  you  find  ?  You  find 
the  one  man  paid  to  defend  this  country  against  the 
other  man  who  is  fighting  for  his  home,  for  his  life,  for 
his  freedom  and  for  his  liberty.  And,  gentlemen,  as 
long  as  a  war  lasts  between  opposing  parties  on  those 
grounds,  I  tell  you  that  it  is  as  impossible  as  it  is  for  me 
to  touch  Heaven  tonight  with  my  hand,  for  England 
to  exterminate  us  as  a  people.  It  would  be  against 
the  traditions  of  history  and  therefore  my  hope  is 
that  such  will  never  happen,  and  it  is  for  this  that  I 
consider  that  our  chances  are  better  to-day  than  they 
were  twelve  months  ago.  Twelve  months  ago  you 
were  told  by  Lord  Kitchener  that  the  war  was  practi- 
cally over;  twelve  months  ago  you  were  told  by  Lord 
Kitchener  that  he  was  raising  only  a  small  band  of 


206  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

people  with  the  object  of  imprisoning  those  roving 
bands  that  were  concealed  in  the  field;  and  after 
twelve  months  you  have  to  hear  from  England  itself  of 
re-enforcements  going  back  to  Africa,  to  do  what  ? 
To  finish  up  the  Boers  who  are  fighting  there.  I  read 
the  London  Times  not  long  ago,  and  I  just  made  up 
an  account  of  the  weekly  edition,  and  I  assure  you 
that  the  Boers  that  were  taken  prisoners,  the  Boers 
that  were  wounded,  in  a  week,  through  Lord  Kitchen- 
er's reports  that  were  sent  to  the  war  office,  were  act- 
ually more  than  ever  they  were  when  they  entered  the 
field  from  the  beginning  of  the  war.  The  Boers  are 
still  fighting.  I  have  seen  a  man  who  brought  a  letter 
from  President  Steyn,  and  I  shall  read  to  you  in  con- 
cluding my  remarks,  his  last  words  in  his  despatch  to 
Lord  Kitchener  and  then  it  will  give  you  an  idea  of 
what  he  thinks  of  the  situation.  The  methods  of 
modern  warfare  have  so  entirely  changed  war  that 
it  is  no  longer  a  question  of  how  people  can  cut  up  one 
another  with  bayonets,  because  your  modern  warfare 
kills  at  a  distance.  This  is  very  advantageous  to  a 
Boer  because  he  is  a  good  shot,  and  the  welfare  of  a 
soldier  is  to  be  a  good  scout  and  a  good  shot  and  a 
good  horseman,  and  I  think  my  friend  will  admit  that 
those  are  feats  that  a  Boer  has  in  his  mind  from  his 
youth,  and  the  Boers  are  a  people  that  can  move  from 
place  to  place. 

Indirectly  we  are  appealing  to  the  British  nation. 
How.?  We  are  going  to  appeal  in  this  way:  I  have 
found  that  the  friendship  between  man  and  man  is 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  207 

everlasting  providing  one  friend  keep  his  fingers  out  of 
another  friend's  purse.  A  nation  is  as  patriotic  as 
ever  can  be,  providing  the  government  keeps  its 
fingers  out  of  the  tax-payer's  purse,  and  you  must 
remember  by  keeping  on  this  war  in  South  Africa,  we 
are  appeaHng  to  the  British  tax-payer,  to  his  purse, 
to  make  up  that  million  dollars  which  he  has  to  pay 
out  every  day  for  this  war.  This  is  the  appeal  that 
we  make,  and  it  is  by  that  means  that  we  hope  to  find 
the  revulsion  of  opinion  come  about  in  that  country. 

I  did  not  know  that  I  was  going  to  speak  here  to- 
night and  that  another  gentleman  was  going  to  say 
anything.  I  will  listen  to  what  he  has  to  say,  and 
then,  of  course,  I  would  like  to  reply  briefly  to  his 
arguments.  Let  me  thank  you,  gentlemen  of  the 
Liberal  Club,  let  me  thank  you,  Mr.  President,  for 
inviting  me  to  come  here.  But  before  I  conclude,  I 
will  just  read  to  you  the  last  concluding  remarks  of 
President  Steyn  to  Lord  Kitchener  which  will  give 
you  an  idea  of  what  the  feelings  are  of  the  Boers  in 
South  Africa:  "It  is  in  the  power  of  your  Excellency, 
more  than  anyone  else,  to  make  an  end  of  it  and  thus 
restore  to  this  unhappy  part  of  the  world  its  former 
prosperity.  We  do  not  ask  for  magnanimity.  We 
demand  only  justice.  I  enclose  herewith  the  transla- 
tion of  my  letter  in  order  that  your  Excellency  may 
not  become  acquainted  with  the  true  contents  of  my 
letter,  through  a  wrong  tranilation,  as  happened  not 
long  ago  with  a  letter  which  I  had  written  to  the 
Government  of  the  S.  A   R.,  and  which  fell  into  the 


208  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

your  hands  at  Reitz,  and  was  published,  but  in  such 
a  manner  that  it  was  hardly  recognizable.  Not  only 
were  some  parts  wrongly  translated,  but  sentences 
included  which  I  had  never  written,  and  other  parts 
entirely  omitted,  so  that  quite  a  wrong  interpretation 
was  given  to  my  letter.  I  have  the  honor  to  be.  Your 
Excellency's  obedient  servant,  M.  F.  Steyn." 

This  is  a  very  important  letter  and  I  am  going  to 
have  it  published.  That  is  his  last  official  reply  to 
the  proclamation  of  Lord  Kitchener,  in  which  he  was 
going  to  banish  every  Boer  that  he  caught  after  the 
15th  of  September.  Well,  if  he  doesn't  make  haste 
he  will  have  to  wa  t  a  long  time  before  he  catches 
them  all.    (Laughter.) 

Gentlemen  this  war  is  a  brutal  war.  You  would 
scarcely  believe  the  death  rate  among  our  women 
and  children, — if  you  only  know  the  suffering — not 
that  I  wish  to  blame  the  British  to  this  extent,  or 
say  that  they  are  barbarous  and  to  say  that  they 
wilfully  starve  our  women  and  children, — but  I  say 
the  surroundings  are  such  that  they  cannot  treat  them 
in  the  manner  in  which  they  ought  to  treat  the  female 
sex  of  the  opposing  party.  And  keeping  these  women 
and  children  with  the  object  of  getting  the  Boer  to 
surrender,  has  been  the  greatest  and  most  cruel  mistake 
made  by  Lord  Roberts;  he  is  only  giving  those  people 
who  are  to-day  in  prison  camps  every  opportunity 
to  advise  their  husbands  to  fight  until  the  last,  because 
these  women  are  reaping  the  benefit,  as  they  think, 
of  what  they  would  have  under  another  British  rule. 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  209 

Thanking  you  most  heartily  for  the  manner  in 
which  you  have  listened  to  the  few  remarks  I  have 
made,  all  I  can  say  gentlemen,  is  that  our  cause  is 
not  as  bad  as  it  is  painted,  and  that  as  sure  as  I  am 
standing  before  you  here  to-night,  as  sure  as  I  am 
speaking  to  you  as  an  intelligent  audience,  so  sure 
am  I  that  the  independence  of  that  country  will 
come  to  its  proper  quarters,  and  that  is  to  the  Boers 
of  South  Africa.     (Applause.) 


Remarks  of  Mr.  Brown,  from  the  British  Point  of 
View. 

Mr.  Stanley  McKeown  Browtiy  who  was  correspond- 
ent of  the  Mail  and  Empire  of  Toronto,  Canada,  and 
who  was  in  South  Africa  as  such  correspondent  and  at 
the  scene  of  numerous  engagements  between  the  contend' 
ing  forces,  spoke  as  follows: 

I  am  sure  that  I  feel  highly  honored  in  having 
been  called  upon  this  evening  to  say  something  to 
you — that  is,  from  what  I  have  seen.  I  have  Hstened 
with  a  great  deal  of  attention  and  a  great  deal  of  in- 
terest to  the  able  and  eloquent  address  that  Command- 
ant Snyman  put  forth  this  evening.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  the  Boer  cause  has  never,  in  all  its  history, 
been  so  ably  expounded  or  had  a  more  able  exponent 
than  Commandant  Snyman,  and  I  must  congratulate 
the  Commandant  whom,  I  am  glad  to  say,  I  can  refer 
to  now  as  a  friend  of  my  own,  since  we  are  discussing 
wars  over  the  walnuts  and  the  wine,  you  might  say — 
a  friend  of  my  own,  and  I  hope  that  we  will  part  this 

14 


210  THE   LIBERAL   CLUB 

evening  without  having  any  bloodshed  (laughter). 
Commandant  Snyman  fought  at  the  battle  and  was 
in  command  of  a  regiment  of  Boers,  of  burghers,  at 
Zand  River,  where  I  had  the  extreme  feHcity  and  the 
very  great  pleasure  of  being  wounded  by  one  man  of 
his  own  side;  I  do  not  know  just  who  that  gentleman 
was,  but  Commandant  Snyman  assures  me  that  it 
was  not  he  (laughter),  otherwise  there  might  be 
trouble.  (More  laughter.)  He  has  gone  in  general 
over  the  subject  most  thoroughly,  going  back  be- 
hind the  years  of  the  Jameson  Raid  which,  as  he  said, 
is  now  ancient  history.  It  is  useless  for  me  to  try  to 
expound  on  things  that  he  has  so  ably  explained,  and 
I  think  explained  in  an  unpartisan  way,  and  if  I  may 
take  up,  from  a  British  standpoint,  allow  me  to  say 
from  a  Colonial  standpoint,  and  even  more  narrowly 
defining  it,  from  a  Canadian  standpoint,  I  would  be 
very  pleased  to  take  on  where  he  left  off.  My  time  is 
limited.  This  I  consider,  and,  of  course,  in  justice  to 
you  gentlemen  you  must  consider  too,  this  is  Com- 
mandant Snyman's  evening,  and  very  glad  you  all  are, 
I  am  sure,  to  have  him  with  you.  At  any  rate,  the 
general  cause  is  too  wide  to  go  into  in  a  very  few 
minutes.  The  general  cause  has  been  outlined,  as  I 
said,  by  him.  But  the  Boers,  gentlemen,  I  think, 
were  ready  for  this  war  for  some  years.  It  was 
proved  conclusively  and  beyond  a  doubt  that  when 
they  were  ready  to  take  to  arms  they  had  arms  not 
only  in  their  own  places,  but  they  had  them  distributed 
well  and  firmly  throughout  the  whole  country;  not 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  211 

only  their  own  country,  but  they  crept  into  our  coun- 
try. They  had  the  most  modern  equipment;  they 
had  the  finest  armament  that  any  government  could 
have.  Of  course,  they  were  surrounded  by  their  own 
gold-fields  and  it  was  very  easy  for  them  to  obtain 
such  equipment.  No  person  can  blame  them  for 
being  well  prepared.  At  any  rate,  this  armament 
which  they  were  then  in  possession  of — and  which,  I 
am  almost  sorry  to  say,  they  are  still  digging  up  from 
out  the  ground  (laughter) — stood  them  in  very  good 
stead  indeed.  But  they  were  not,  as  he  said,  the  small 
race,  unsophisticated,  as  he  would  perhaps  have  you 
know.  They  were  used  to  war,  gentlemen;  they  had 
had  almost  annually  a  scrimmage  with  some  of  the 
black  tribes  there;  they  were  used  to  firing  and  shoot- 
ing. So  that  when  they  met  the  British  they  had 
a  fine  training,  indeed.  They  not  only  trained  them- 
selves, they  not  only  trained  the  elders  and  fathers  of 
their  families,  but  they  taught  the  children  to  grow 
up  with  a  spirit — as  he  refuted  and  as  he  resented; 
and  if  I  am  wrong  I  hope  he  will  pardon  me  and  cor- 
rect me — so  that  they  had  a  sort  of  antipathy  against 
the  British;  they  did  not  like  these  red  necks  that  we 
wore;  we  were  called  the  "rooinecks"  and  there  was 
certain  objection  to  us  and  their  war  cry  was  **to 
drive  the  rooinecks  into  the  sea."  My  object  in  tell- 
ing you  this,  or  the  reason  I  can  give  for  saying  this  is, 
under  my  own  personal  experience,  Mr.  President  and 
gentlemen  of  the  Liberal  Club,  I  saw  their  text  books, 
in   Boer  farm-houses  and   where  we   had,  in  plain 


212  THE   LIBERAL    CLUB 

English,  the  story  of  John  Gilpin,  they  would  put  in 
some  renowned  statesman, — that  Joseph  Chamber- 
lain, or  somebody  else,  was  the  renegade  who  ran 
through  the  town.  They  brought  up  their  children 
to  understand  that  the  British  were  the  people  they 
must  go  against.  In  many  cases  I  shall  submit  to 
you  they  were  misled. 

The  ordinary  Boer  is  not  as  my  friend  Commandant 
Snyman  is — not  by  any  means.  He  is,  as  perhaps 
many  British  soldiers  are,  and  as  perhaps  you.  Com- 
mandant, were,  during  the  war,  bewhiskered  and 
bent  down.  Of  course,  a  dress  suit  will  probably  im- 
prove or  enhance  his  appearance  greatly.  (Laughter.) 
If  they  could  send  those  Boers  who  are  fighting  there 
to-night  and  let  them  march  in,  as  we  saw  them  march 
when  we  surrounded  General  Cronje  with — not  his 
four  thousand  two  hundred,  but  his  four  thousand  two 
hundred  and  twenty-one  men  (laughter) — if  they 
could  march  in  here,  gentlemen,  I  am  sure  you  would 
scarcely  class  them  as  either  Daughters  of  the  Revolu- 
tion or  associate  members  of  your  Grand  Army  of 
the  Republic.  (Laughter.)  They  were  told  when  the 
command  of  the  cornet  went  around,  some  of  them 
who  are  not  as  well  up  as  my  friend,  who  is  also  an  ex- 
member  of  the  Parliament,  not  as  well  up  as  he  is, — 
these  burghers  were  told  in  many  instances  "Come 
get  your  guns,  rush  out,  the  British  are  taking  your 
homes  away  from  you."  And  I  can  sympathize  with 
Commandant  Snyman  and  I  can  fully  realize  and  ap- 
preciate his  position,  for,  gentlemen,  there  is  not  one 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  ^13 

of  US  here,   either  speaker  or  listener,  who  cannot 
say, 

"  Breathes  there  the  man  with  soul  so  dead, 
Who  never  to  himself  hath  said, 
This  is  my  own,  my  native  land!" 

I  don't  blame  a  man  for  fighting  for  his  home  at  all, 
but  let  him  know  the  facts  before  he  takes  up  arms. 

Another  thing  to  show  you  that  they  were  misled, 
to  show  you  that  many  of  them  did  not  know  the 
circumstances  of  the  affair.  I  happened  to  'be  at 
Modder  River  when  General  Cronje's  men  were 
brought  there,  when  they  were  sent  down  as  British 
prisoners  of  war  to  Cape  Town,  and  I  spoke  to  one  of 
them  who  seemed  to  be  very  well  educated  and  I  asked 
him  what  he  thought  of  it  and  he  said  he  was  very 
glad  that  Cronje  and  himself  and  the  rest  had  sur- 
rendered, "but,"  he  said,  "we  are  going  down  to  Cape 
Town  now,  aren't  we.?"  I  said  "Yes.  You  will  be 
glad  to  see  the  sea,  won't  you?"  "Yes,"  but  he 
didn't  like  the  water  very  much,  he  admitted.  He 
said,  "Why  should  the  British  come  over  here  and  try 
to  take  our  places  away  from  us  ?"  He  says,  "Our 
Commandant  told  us,  pointed  that  out  to  us  and  said 
that  we  never  went  over  to  London,  England,  and 
tried  to  take  London,  England."  That  just  shows, 
gentlemen,  I  think,  that  some  of  them  were  misled. 
He  was  more  educated  than  the  ordinary  Boer  who 
scarcely  knew  what  he  was  fighting  for  at  all,  in  many 
cases.  Of  course  I  may  say,  and  you  all  know,  that 
the  die  has  been  cast.     W^e  Britishers  have  put  our 


^14  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

hand  to  the  plow  and  it  cannot  be  turned  back;  and  if 
there  was  a  seeming  injustice  about  it,  it  must  neces- 
sarily be  overlooked,  for,  like  Caesar,  when  he  had 
crossed  the  Rubicon,  we  cannot  turn  back  now.  We 
have  taken  Boer  prisoners  on  many  occasions,  and 
they  have  said  that  they  would  be  good,  neutral 
citizens  at  least,  sometimes  loyal  citizens.  Instead 
of  that  we  find  them  breaking  their  parole,  going  out 
on  commando  again.  And  then  another  thing:  at 
Bloemfontein  and  other  centers  that  I  might  men- 
tion, that  Commandant  Snyman  no  doubt  knows  of, 
they  were  asked  by  proclamation, — a  very  mild  one 
was  issued  stating  that  they  should  come  in  and  sur- 
render their  arms  and  go  back  to  their  farms  and  live 
peaceably.  They  came  in  and  surrendered  their  arms, 
got  their  passes  back  to  their  farms,  and  in  a  few  days 
what  did  we  find  ?  We  found  that  the  Boer — and  all 
credit  to  him  in  a  certain  way — was  very  wily;  he  had 
come  and  given  us  his  old  musket  or  his  old  flint  lock, 
and  in  the  cupboard  or  the  cellar  of  his  own  home  we 
found  the  new,  modern  Mauser.   (Laughter.) 

Commandant  Snyman — ^Quite  true. 

Mr.  Brown  (continuing) — That  is  one  of  the  wily 
arts  which  they  are  contriving  and  which  they  have 
contrived.  In  so  far  as  his  reference  to  prisoners,  to 
ladies,  women  and  children,  being  badly  treated, 
gentlemen,  I  can  only  say  that  if  what  Commandant 
Snyman  has  said  are  facts,  I  am  sorry  for  it,  but  I 
have  seen  both  fighting  and  prisoners  of  war,  women 
and  children,  in  some  camps,  and  never  yet,  under 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  213 

my  personal  observation — and  that  is  the  only  thing 
from  which  I  can  speak — have  I  seen  a  woman  treated 
in  any  other  way  than  human  femininity  should  be 
treated.  I  think  you  will  all  agree  that  in  decades 
past,  in  the  whole  history  of  British  fighting  or  the 
British  nation,  you  never  yet  have  had  to  point  to 
them,  as  to  some  other  nations,  where  they  have 
degraded  womanhood,  and  I  do  not  think  it  is  the 
Briton's  intention — if  it  is,  it  is  far  from  what  most  of 
us  hope — ever  to  maltreat  or  illtreat  women.  In  the 
hospitals  that  I  visited  I  saw  Boer  prisoners  just  as 
kindly  treated  as  were  our  own  prisoners.  And 
Commandant  Snyman  told  me  this  evening  before 
the  dinner,  that  when  he  had  thousands  of  British 
prisoners  passing  through  his  hands  he  took  a  more 
noble,  you  might  call  it,  interest  in  them  than  per- 
haps he  would  his  own  men.  And,  gentlemen,  they 
were  given  all  the  medical  attention  that  was  possible. 
It  seems  to  have  been  firmly  impressed  on  their  minds, 
the  words  which  are  true  and  noble  words,  almost 
now  a  memory;  how  e'er  it  be,  it  seems  to  me  it  s  old 
enough  to  be  good: 

"Kind  hearts  are  more  than  coronets, 

And  simple  faith  than  Norman  blood." 

This  war  has  brought  up  different  things.  One  of 
the  first  noticeable  events  was  shooting  on  the  white 
flag.  I  think  that  I  first  noticed  that  occurring  at 
the  battle  of  Belmont,  which  was  fought  on  the  23d  of 
November,  1899.  ^^  ^^^  British  were  about  to  rush 
a  kopje  and  as  the  Boers  were  going  at  a  kopje,  they 


216  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

had  some  occasion  to  put  up  a  white  flag,  and  when  a 
correspondent  who  was  in  the  same  position  that  I 
was, — Mr.  Knight  of  the  London  (England)  Morning 
Post, — thinking  that  he  had  perfect  security  under 
that  white  flag,  went  forward  to  take  a  sketch  of  the 
surroundings,  he  found  a  veritable  hail  of  bullets 
around  him.  That  I  think,  perhaps — I  may  be  mis- 
taken in  the  date  of  the  occurrence — ^was  the  founda- 
tion of  the  shooting  on  the  white  flag.  It  has  gone 
on  repeatedly.  I  might,  if  time  would  permit,  men- 
tion circumstance  after  circumstance  that  I  do  know 
of, — and  in  this  case  I  speak  whereof  I  know, — where 
the  white  flag  has  by  them  been  used  in — I  hate  to  use 
too  strong  a  term — used  I  think,  in  a  very  unfair 
way.  Then  at  two  other  places  where  you,  sir,  [Com- 
mandant Snyman]  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  present, 
and  I  was  myself,  we  were  under  the  brow  oft  he 
singularly  high  kopje  that  you  know  of  there;  we  had 
our  little  ambulance  stationed  with  the  largest  white 
flag  that  whitewash  and  red  paint  would  make,  and 
the  Boers  most  deliberately,  we  proved  it,  most 
deliberately,  shot  on  our  red  crosses  there,  so  that 
our  commander  had  to  move  to  a  place  of  safety 
and  put  our  wounded  and  dying  men  among  Boer 
residents  so  that  they  would  have  for  themselves  some 
protection.  The  Boer  tactics,  gentlemen,  may  be  of 
interest  to  you.  The  Boer  tactics  are  adequately 
and  absolutely  well  fitted  for  that  country.  People 
have  said,  "Why  don't  they  come  out  in  the  open  and 
fight  in  squares  and  give  us  a  good  chance?"     That 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  217 

would  have  been  the  most  unfortunate  thing  the 
Boers  could  have  done  in  their  lives.  Gentlemen, 
and  you,  Mr.  Commandant,  perhaps  know,  that  if 
you  had  come  out  in  the  open  in  a  square,  with  the 
vast  amount  of  armament  and  military  equipment 
that  we  had  there,  we  could  have  blown  most  of  your 
burghers  off  the  face  of  the  earth  in  a  few  days.  That 
would  be  a  too  hardy  trick  for  you  to  presume  on. 
They  fight  by  getting  behind  rocks;  they  go  through 
the  country  and  resort  to  a  system  of  sniping,  it  might 
be  said;  and  no  person  can  be  blamed  for  taking  the 
best  advantage  of  the  natural  resources  that  the 
country    presents. 

Now,  what  made  the  colonists  such  expert  fighters 
through  that  country,  or  what  gave  them  such  renown 
throughout  the  world  ?  It  was  simply  because  they 
say  the  Boers  had  the  best  system  and  best  tactics. 
They  went  along  those  lines.  The  British  at  the  present 
time  have  19  cavalry  regiments  there,  they  have  ic6 
infantry  regiments  in  South  Africa,  of  which  26  are 
militia;  that  is,  those  who  have  gone  voluntarily,  who 
are  not  fighting  for  pay,  as  the  Commandant  referred 
to.  The  Colonists,  as  I  have  said,  on  account  of  their 
adaptability  and  resourcefulness,  proved  to  be  the 
very  best  fighters  that  England  could  have  got  out 
there.  We  had  not  only  the  colonists  to  fall  back  on, 
but,  gentlemen,  if  we  had  wanted  it,  we  might  have 
had  some  of  the  natives.  The  Chief,  as  you  know, 
sir,  of  the  Basuto  tribe  offered  us  thousands  of  men 
to  come  right  in  and  go  against  the  Boers,  but  Britain 


218  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

said,  "No;  it  is  a  white  man's  war,  and  if  we  have 
to  bear  the  loss  we  will  bear  the  white  man's  burden, 
so  we  went  on  without  the  assistance  of  the  Basutoes, 
excepting  the  fact  that  we  did  take  advantage  of  some 
of  them  for  mechanical  purposes  and  otherwise. — 

Commandant  Snyman: — You  have  regiments  of 
them  now. 

Mr.  Brown: — Well,  not  under  arms. 

Commandant  Snyman: — Oh,  yes. 

Mr.  Brown: — Properly  enUsted  ? 

Commandant  Snyman — Yes,  properly  enlisted, 
with  that  slash  hat  and  that  khaki  suit  on. 

Mr.  Brown: — Commandant  Snyman  has  just  told 
me  that  we  have  regiments  of  Basutoes  fighting  for 
us  too — 

Commandant  Snyman : — No,  I  say  Kaffirs,  negroes, 
not  Basutoes. 

Mr.  Brown: — I  can  simply  say  that  I  never  saw 
regiments  of  negroes  there,  and  until  you  see 
a  thing  you  are  not  positive  of  it.  (Laughter.)  I 
am  very  glad  to  know  that  if  that  be  the  case,  as  I 
know,  no  doubt,  since  it  comes  from  such  a  source  as 
it  does,  that  it  is  true — I  am  very  glad  that  those 
Kaffirs  with  their  low  brows  and  their  very  small,  or 
you  might  say,  minimum  amount  of  intellect,  have 
still  enough  intellect  to  see  that  the  British  are  in  the 
right  and  that  they  are  going  to  win.  (Laughter.) 

There  is,  gentlemen,  of  course  the  pathetic  aspect 
about  war  which  no  person  can  deny,  and,  as  Com- 
mandant Snyman  has  said,  referring  to  a  trite  saying 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  219 

of  one  of  your  own  American  generals,  "War  is  simply 
Hell."  It  is  fine  to  sit  around  here  and  smoke  and 
discuss  things,  eating  and  drinking  and  all  feeling 
merry,  but  when  you  go  through  a  country  that  is 
devastated,  one  that  is  burnt  practically  to  the  ground, 
when  you  go  in  and  see  the  little  Boer  baby's  play- 
things,— or  perhaps  you  may  take  another  little  jaunt 
and  go  in  and  see  the  little  Filipino's  playthings 
(laughter) — then  you  will  say  to  yourself  that  the 
women  and  children  must  be  pitied.  It  is  the  men 
who  have  to  face  the  stern  realities  of  war,  gentlemen, 
but  those  little  babies  who  were  taken  out,  they  were 
taken  away  from  their  homes,  so  were  their  mothers 
and  their  sisters,  and  they  are  not  to  blame;  and  in 
that  respect  there  is  a  great  deal  of  pathos  in  it.  But 
there  are  always  two  sides  to  a  question.  Think 
back  in  England.  The  Boers  had  so  many  thousands 
in  the  field,  the  British  had  so  many  more  thousand 
in  the  field.  Think  of  those  burning  hearts,  those 
full-blooded  hearts  and  those  choking  throats  that 
for  two  or  three  years  now  have  scanned  the  bulletin 
boards  at  the  War  Ofl&ce.  And  thus  there  is  deso- 
lation not  only  among  the  Dutch  of  South  Africa,  but 
there  is  the  greatest  desolation,  there  is  the  greatest 
wrecking  of  homes  in  England,  among  our  white  and 
English-speaking  people. 

Commandant  Snyman : — That  is  what  I  said.  That 
is   quite   true. 

Mr.  Brown: — Well,  Mr.  President,  I  think  I  may 
interlude,  I  am  not  for  war  at  all;   I  am  more  peace- 


220  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

able  than  warlike;  but  I  think  there  must  be  a  silver 
lining  to  the  almost  endless  cloud  that  seems  to  hang 
over  the  South  African  Republic.  There  is  a  lining 
like  that  to  every  cloud,  it  is  said  by  the  maxim,  and 
we  all  hope  for  the  interest  of  mankind  and  for  the 
interest  of  the  two  white  nations  who  are  combating, 
one  with  another,  that  this  silver  lining  will  soon 
make  itself  apparent.  Let  those  burghers,  since 
they  know  that  England  is  not  going  to  turn  back — 
more  than  that,  England  will  not  turn  back — let 
them  settle  down  and  accept  those  terms.  I  may 
be  wrong  in  saying  that;  England  may  be  wrong  in 
putting  out  her  mandamus  telling  what  they  must  do; 
but  in  the  face  of  the  facts,  whether  it  be  justice  or 
injustice,  it  must  come  to  an  inevitable  end.  So, 
since  hey  are,  as  Commandant  Snyman  said,  a  civ- 
ilized and  partially  educated  race,  let  them  take  that 
for  granted;  let  them  go  and  settle  down  and  live 
in  peace  under  British  suzerainty;  let  them  be  an 
English-speaking  colony,  settled  partly  by  England 
and  partly  by  the  Dutch;  and  although  we  may  have 
two  minds  with  but  a  single  thought,  two  hearts  that 
beat  as  one,  still,  under  that  rule  which  England  is 
willing  to  give,  I  think  we  can  easily  look  forward  to 
something  grand  and  noble  in  the  future.  It  is  a 
good  land,  that  South  Africa;  one-tenth  of  it  has  not 
yet  been  overturned  by  the  hand  of  man;  that  soil 
is  everywhere  capable  of  cultivating,  and  capable  of 
cultivating  everything  from  the  sturdiest  palms  or 
cacti  to  the  finest  and  most  delicate  rose.     Gentle- 


THE  CA  USE  OF  THE  BOER  221 

tiemen,  such  land  must  not  go  to  waste;  and  it 
must  at  length  be  cultivated  by  wholly  British  interests, 
I  think.  It  is,  as  the  Bible  might  say,  veritably  a 
land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey.  It  only  needs, 
gentlemen,  a  gigantic  system  of  irrigation  instituted 
or  organized  by  man,  to  make  it  one  of  the  most 
prosperous  and  beautiful  flower  beds  of  the  world. 

We  have  often  been  asked  by  different  burghers, 
"What  do  you  Canadians  want  to  poke  your  nose 
into  it  for  .?"  I  should  tell  him,  if  the  burgher  is  quite 
right  in  asking  us  why  we  poke  our  nose  in, tell  him  the 
feelings  that  overcame  the  people  of  Canada,tell  him, I 
hope  the  feelings  of  the  people  in  Australia  and  New 
Zealand;  our  feelings,  sir,  are  these — ^you  have  de- 
scribed yours  regarding  your  wife  and  children  and 
your  relations,  and  no  person  can  blame  a  man  for 
that;  on  our  side  I  must  tell  you  this:  that  in  the 
month  pf  October,  1899,  Canada,  Ceylon,  Australia 
and  New  Zealand,for  the  first  time,became  an  active, 
integral  part  of  the  British  Empire.  Up  to  that  time 
we  had  prided  ourselves  on  British  citizenship  ;we  had 
extolled  the  vastness  of  the  empire  of  which  we  formed 
a  part  and  we  had  boasted  of  a  civil  and  religious 
freedom,  although  we  had  been  but  inactive  partici- 
pants in  that  glorious  liberty.  When,  a  little  more 
than  two  years  ago,  we  heard  that  the  dear  mother- 
land was  embroiled  in  a  war  with  the  South  African 
republics,  in  which  she  would  accept  assistance  from 
her  colonial  sons, then,  as  the  Greek  goddess  Athene 
is  said  to  have  sprung  full-armed  from  the  forehead  of 


222  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Jove,so  did  the  latent  loyalty  which  so  long  strangled 
and  struggled  in  the  hearts  of  the  proud  and  patriotic 
British  citizens  spring  forth  and  could  not  be  repulsed 
save  by  Boer  bullets  and  death  on  the  battlefield. 
Such  a  spontaneous  outburst,  gentlemen,  could  not 
be  overlooked,  and  whatever  political  differences 
our  political  leaders  may  have  in  Canada,  whatever 
differences  and  discussions  they  have  at  present,  on 
this  one  point  at  least  they  are  agreed, that  from  now 
henceforth  and  forever  the  sons  of  Canada  shall  and 
will  be  wilHng  to  shed  their  very  last  drop  of  blood  in 
upholding  the  glory  and  honor  of  our  good  old  **Union 
Jack."     (Applause.) 

One  word  and  I  have  concluded.  We  sailed  away 
with  our  different  contingents — Commandant  Sny- 
man  said  that  he  has  heard  of  thousands  of  men  going 
every  week,  but  they  have  not  gone  yet.  We  have 
sent  more  than  five  thousand  men  already,  Aus- 
tralia more  than  twelve  thousand  men,  and  I  could 
quote  the  numbers  for  Ceylon  and  Zealand  if  neces- 
sary, and  next  December,  if  you  live,  sir,  long 
enough,  you  will  see  six  hundred  more  of  the  best 
equipped  men  from  Canada, ready  to  go  out  and  take 
their  share  in  the  battle  again.  When  we  landed 
at  Cape  Town  and  were  sent  north  to  join  the  first 
sons  of  the  British  Empire,  your  men  were  leaving 
Pretoria;  the  thought  in  our  minds  was  that  we  were 
fighting  a  just  battle  and  that  we  were  going  to  do 
what  was  right;  your  men,  no  doubt,  thought  the 
very  same  thing;  they    came  South    and    we    came 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  223 

North;  we  met  halfway  at  Paardeberg,  and  we  set- 
tled our  differences;  we  took  four  thousand  and  two 
hundred  of  your  men,  and  that  made  us  think  still 
more  we  were  right.  We  have  been  called  a  greedy 
nation,  but  I  hope,  gentlemen,  that  our  aggressiveness 
is  also  always  tinged  with  progressiveness;  and  I 
think  that  if  the  Colony  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope, 
the  Orange  River  Colony,  as  it  is  now  called,  and  the 
Transvaal,  will  come  under  our  suzerainty  amicably, 
if  not  by  force,  that  they  will  agree  with  the  millions 
of  people  who  are  now  under  British  control  and  say 
that  they  will  have  just  laws,  equal  rights  for  all  men, 
the  same  as  we  have  them  in  Canada,  and  that  it  will 
be  one  day  of  glorious  prosperity  for  them  all. 

In  conclusion,  gentlemen,  the  standard  of  British 
valor  in  peace  and  war  has  always  been  high  and  I 
hope  that  it  may  ever  be  high;  the  standard  of  Boer 
tenacity  has  been  proven  through  this  war  to  be 
lasting  and  to  be  efficient;  we  are  still  carrying  out 
our  almost  interminable  efforts,  and  at  some  future 
day  one  of  us  must  win,  and  arguments  that  are  put 
forth  here,  although  they  may  enlist  your  sympathy 
on  one  side,  I  think  there  is  only  one  inevitable  con- 
clusion. There  have  been  pictures  drawn  to-night 
of  war  and  brief  allusions  to  peace.  War  is  some- 
thing desolate  that  we  all  want  to  keep  away  from — 
and  I  hope,  since,  as  I  stated  before,  that  I  am,  not 
to  use  a  modern  slang  phrase,  I  am  "not  for  war," 
— some  day  we  may  be  in  that  idealistic  state  where 
Tennyson   said   that, 


224  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

"Till  the  war  drum  throbbed  no  longer,  and  the  battle 

flags  are  furled 
In  the  Parliament  of  man,  the  federation  of  the  world." — 

Mr.  President,  Mr.  Commandant  Snyman,  after 
a  while  all  the  English-speaking  people  of  the  world, 
American,  French,  German,  Dutch  and  whoever 
else  want  to  join  hands  with  us,  will  form  one  solid 
phalanx,  human  cordon  around  the  world;  then  at 
last  war  may  be  done  away  with  by  some  ultimate 
discovery  of  man,  and  we  shall  be,  as  Mr.  Kipling 
beautifully  expressed  it  in  his  poem  on  "The  Future,** 
in  a  condition, 

"When  earth's  last  picture  is  painted,  and  the  tubes  are 

twisted  and  dried. 
When  the  oldest  colours  have  faded,  and  the  youngest  critic 

has  died. 
We  shall  rest,  and,  faith,  we  shall  need  it — lie  down  for  an 

aeon  or  two. 
Till  the  Master  of  all  Good  Workmen  shall  set  us  to  work 

anew!" 

(Applause.) 


Commandant  Snyman: — Mr.  President,  I  must 
reciprocate  with  my  friend  here  and  congratulate 
him  on  account  of  the  moderate  way  that  he  has 
stated  his  case  before  you.  I  think  it  is  the  friendly 
faces  that  we  both  see  that  has  turned  our  ideas  to  be 
more  friendly  towards  one  another.  What  I  wished 
to  explain,  if  my  English  was  not  to  the  point,  I  would 
like  to  explain  again,  in  reference  io  the  concentrated 
camps  where   the  women   and   children   are   today 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  225 

suffering,  was  that  I  do  not  blame  the  British  Nation 
or  say  that  they  are  treating  them  cruelly;  but  I  said 
the  surroundings  and  circumstances  in  which  the 
British  have  themselves  been  placed,  have  made  it  so 
that  whatever  they  would  like  to  do  they  are  not  in 
position  to  carry  it  out  and  consequently  these  women 
and  children  are  suffering  more  than  the  human 
tongue  can  ever  explain.  Another  thing  which  I 
would  like  to  explain  to  my  friends  here  is  this: 
every  man  is  entitled  to  his  own  and  every  nation 
has  its  characteristic,  and  just  for  a  moment  to  make 
a  Boer  an  Englishman  or  to  make  an  Englishman  a 
Boer  is  a  matter  of  impossibility;  therefore,  trying 
to  annex  those  two  countries,  trying  to  conquer  us  as 
a  people,  is  not  going  to  make  us  the  British  nation. 
Never,  never  as  long  as  he  lives  or  I  live,  will  that 
ever  happen  by  that  means.  Only  other  ways  would 
have  accomplished  it,  and  there  was  no  man  who  had 
the  reins  better  in  hand  than  the  very  man  who 
turned  a  traitor  towards  a  good  cause,  and  that  was 
Mr.  Rhodes.  My  friend,  Mr.  Brown,  said  that  the 
Boers  were  armed  to  the  hilt.  No  man  is  more 
agreeable  to  admit  that  than  myself.  Yes,  sir,  they 
were.  But  since  when  ?  Since  that  notorious  Jame- 
son Raid.  Now,  supposing  that  the  Boers  saw  that 
here  was  a  conspiracy  moved  by  a  man  who  was 
representing  the  very  best  class  of  people  in  the  Cape 
Colony,  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Cecil  Rhodes,  making  a 
raid  into  their  country  to  overthrow  the  republic, 
annexing  it,  as  they  thought,  and  then  let  me  tell  you 

16 


226  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

if  Mr.  Rhodes  had  been  successful  at  that  time  it 
would  not  have  been  in  the  interest  of  the  Br'tish 
Empire,  because  Mr.  Rhodes  is  no  more  an  imperial- 
ist than  what  I  am;  what  he  did  was  for  his  own 
benefit.  He  didn't  have  the  luck  and  consequently 
he  couldn't  use  it.  (Applause.)  Supposing  that 
Kruger  and  the  Boers,  after  they  saw  that  they 
couldn't  trust  their  supposed  friends,  had  remained 
silent  and  had  not  armed,  and  had  disregarded  the 
words  of  Mr.  Rhodes,  when  he  said  in  the  Cape 
Colony,  speaking  on  a  different  question,  *Now  is  the 
time  for  Great  Britain  to  concentrate  her  forces  on 
the  frontier  of  the  two  republics  because  the  Boers 
will  not  fight;  Kruger  is  only  playing  a  bluff."  Suppose 
Kruger  had  not  in  the  meantime  prepared  himself; 
would  you  have  called  him  a  president  worthy  of  the 
name,  to  be  a  president  of  a  republic?  No;  you 
Englishmen  in  England,  you  Englishmen  in  Canada 
and  Australia — and  I  know  you  perfectly — would 
have  said,  what  a  fool  he  was  to  mislead  his  people! 
But  he  guarded  against  that  raid  and  he  guarded 
against  the  biggest  raid  in  the  world.  And  what  was 
it  which  precipitated  this  war  ?  The  forcing,  the 
marching  cf  the  British  troops  onto  the  frontiers  of 
the  two  friendly  states  while  they  were  still  engaging 
with  one  another  to  try  and  settle  amicably  a  dispute 
which  was  an  internal  affair  of  the  South  African 
Republic  And  I  am  glad,  I  am  proud  of  President 
Kruger:  I  am  proud  of  every  Boer  who  had  his  arm 
ready  to  defend  that  which  belonged  to  him  and  for 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  227 

which  he  paid  very  dearly — his  character,  his  nation- 
aHty,  his  freedom,  his  liberty  and  all  that  belonged 
to  himself  and  his  wife  and  to  his  children!  Whom 
have  you  got  to  blame  today  ?  Are  they  not  the  men 
who  were  living  in  Cape  Town,  your  spies  that  you 
had  in  the  country,  who  served  it,  who  investigated 
the  police,  who  tried  to  find  out  from  the  Boer  re- 
publics all  that  Kruger  and  the  Boer,  the  sly  Boer  as 
you  call  him,  was  smart  enough  not  to  let  leak  out  ? 
I  think,  gentlemen  of  America  and  you,  my  friend 
[Mr.  Brown],  had  you  but  known  what  this  war  would 
mean  to  your  country,  what  this  war  would  mean  to 
your  nationality  what  you  would  lose  in  prestige  as 
a  great  nation  fighting  a  small  band  of  people, — then 
you  and  your  British  statesmen  would  have  been  the 
last  ones  to  defend  this  war,  because  I  think  you 
have  come  out  with  no  credit  as  a  fighting  race. 
(Applause.) 


(Following  Commandant  Snyman,  Mr.  Albert  E- 
Jones,  a  member  of  the  Club,  spoke  upon  the  topic  of 
the  evening,  presenting  the  British  view.  To  these 
remarks  Commandant  Snyman  replied,  and  he  then 
continued — speaking  in  part  as  follows:) 

. . .  .My  friends  wish  to  make  out  that  I  am  a 
great  man  and  that  I  am  over  and  above  the  average 
of  my  people,  as  an  educated  man.  Gentlemen,  I  am 
sorry  to  inform  you  tonight  that  I  only  take  a  very 
small  place  in  my  nation  in  South  Africa:  you  will 
find  many  people  from  that  country  who  can  deal 


228  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

with  this  question  more  ably  than  I  can  at  this  mo- 
ment, but  it  is  because  I  know  that  it  is  a  cruel  war 
and  a  wrong  war,  and  I  know  that  England  has  never 
been  justified  for  that  war,  that  I  am  standing  before 
you  tonight.  And  my  friend  told  you  that  England 
means  to  civilize  us.  God  help  us!  What  is  such 
civilization,  to  take  my  life  with  the  object  of  civiliz- 
ing me  ?  (Laughter.)  And  I  tell  you  tonight  that  as 
dear  as  this  country  is  to  you,  as  close  as  my  friend's 
sympathies  are  with  England,  so  dear  is  the  sympathy 
of  the  Boer  with  his  country.  My  dear  friends,  let 
me  ask  and  appeal  to  you  once  more,  and  I  do  not  do  it 
to  play  on  your  sympathies, — just  think  of  it:  we  are 
fighting  and  defending  what  is  our  own  and  what  we 
are  justly  entitled  to  defend.  And  don't  you  call  us 
men  for  it  ?  Don't  you  think  we  are  right  in  doing 
so  ?  And  here  England  justifies  her  actions  for  the 
little  children  and  for  the  starving  w^omen  and  the 
death-rate  that  is  so  appalling,  by  saying  that  it  is  the 
fault  of  the  Boer,  because  he  defends  his  own  rights. 
No,  my  dear  friend  [Mr.  Jones] — let  me  tell  you  once 
and  for  all — you  are  here  in  Buffalo  and  to  stay  here, 
but  if  you  were  to  be  born  over  and  born  in  South 
Africa  you  would  be  as  mild  in  your  arguments  as 
my  friend  [Mr.  Brown]  has  been  here,  because  he 
has  seen  it.     (Applause.) 

Gentlemen,  I  am  only  here  to  tell  you  actually 
what  has  taken  place  and  I  am  not  reading  postscripts 
and  I  am  not  reading  other  people's  letters;  I  am  tell- 
ing you  of  my  experience  as  a  British  subject  in  that 


THE  CA  USE  OF  THE  BOER  229 

country  and  that  I  have  experience  as  a  man  who  had 
the  greatest  admiration  for  the  English  and  who  still 
holds  to  that  estimate,  but  any  one  is  far  wrong 
who  thinks,  when  I  say  we  appeal  to  the  British 
nation,  we  appeal  to  the  British  nation  that  I 
am  asking  that  the  English  will  give  us  freedom 
under  that  flag.  No,  my  dear  sir.  That  is  not  what 
I  am  appealing  for,  to  the  English  people;  I  am 
appealing  to  them  for  justice,  to  give  us  what  belongs 
to  us  and  nothing  more,  and  if  they  would  leave  us 
alone  you  could  live  there  and  everybody  could  live 
there.  It  was  because  of  the  Uitlander  population, 
that  had  the  money  and  who  made  the  money,  and 
who  got  what  they  made  out  of  that  country,  that 
the  Transvaal  Boer,  as  innocent  and  simple-minded 
as  he  is,  cleared  and  moved  away  from  the  great 
civilized  nation,  to  go  and  live  in  peace  and  take  out 
the  gold  as  he  liked  it  and  the  best  way  he  could. 
Your  American  people  have  been  there,  and  they 
have  not  got  gold,  so  hundreds  of  them  have  fought 
for  us,  and  some  of  the  noble  deeds  that  have  been 
done  for  our  cause  have  been  done  by  the  American 
cow-boys  who  went  from  this  country  to  fight  with 
us.  I  may  add  that  six  American  cow-boys  chased 
six  hundred  Lancers  over  the  hills  and  captured 
twenty-seven  of  them  and  brought  them  into  our 
laager.    (Applause  and  laughter.) 

Senator  Laughlin:  — Mr.  President,  I  would  like 
to  ask  the  guest  of  the  evening  one  question.  Is  it 
not    a    fact,    sir,    that    President    Kruger    and    his 


230       -  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

advisers  had  practically  conceded  all  that  the  British 
authorities  demanded  except  a  question  of  two 
years  as  to  the  probation  of  citizenship  before  this 
war  was  commenced  ? 

Commandant  Snyman :  —  Yes  sir.  You  will 
remember  that  at  the  conference  that  was  held  at 
Bloemfontein,  the  question  there  between  Sir  Alfred 
Milner  in  behalf  of  the  British  Government  and 
Paul  Kruger  of  the  Transvaal,  was  a  question  of 
five  or  seven  years.  Kruger  went  back  to  Pretoria 
and  called  his  Volksraad  together  and  after  dis- 
cussing the  question  two  days,  the  Volksraad  acceeded 
to  Sir  Alfred  Milner's  request  of  five  years'  resi- 
dence. As  soon  as  that  was  known,  the  next  morn- 
ing the  whole  of  the  pro-English  Boers,  supported  by 
that  particular  gang  of  Cape  Town,  made  one  de- 
nouncement and  said,  "Here  is  one  of  Kruger's 
greatest  and  cleverest  tricks  if  you  will  accept  that. 
It  is  only  to  get  the  British  way  from  the  frontier  of 
that  country  that  he  wishes  to  make  that  concession, 
and  as  soon  as  they  are  away  he  will  revert  to  the 
old  order  of  things,"  and  to  that  President  Steyn, 
the  man  who  is  now  fighting  in  that  country  still, 
immediately  sent  a  despatch  to  Sir  Alfred  Milner 
to  be  forwarded  to  the  Dutch  Government,  in 
which  he  stated  in  his  own  person  that  he  would 
give  as  security  himself  and  his  state,  that  if  that 
law,  as  passed  by  the  Transvaal,  would  be  accepted 
by  the  Uitlander  population,  that  that  law  would 
remain  on  the  statute  books  of  the  country,  and  Sir 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  231 

Alfred  Milner — now  Lord  Milner — sent  that  des- 
patch with  another  portion  of  a  despatch  home  to 
the  British  Government,  but  kept  that  portion  in 
which  President  Steyn  offered  himself  and  his  person 
as  security  as  well  as  his  state,  and  when  Milner  was 
twitted  by  some  of  the  British  there  as  well  as  in 
Cape  Colony,  he  gave  the  lame  excuse  that  the 
cable  was  interfered  with.  So  that  actually  and 
practically,  gentlemen,  everything  was  acceded  to  at 
the  last  moment  to  avoid  a  war.  But  it  was  the 
country  that  they  wanted,  and  they  wanted  to  run 
over  it.     That  is  what  has  happened.     (Applause.) 

Frank  M.  Loomis: — I  would  like  to  ask  the  guest 
of  the  evening,  Mr.  President,  to  say  something  in 
reference  to  the  statement  made  by  Mr.  Jones,  that 
you  have  not  noticed  as  yet,  so  far  as  I  have  seen,  and 
that  was  the  statement  that  the  Boer  Government 
was  an  oligarchy  and  not  in  any  proper  sense  a 
republic. 

Commandant  Snyman: — ^You  can  only  base  your 
argument  on  the  constitution  of  the  country.  The 
constitution  and  the  law  of  the  country  is  that  the 
President  is  to  be  nominated  by  the  people  in  general; 
that  the  President,  after  he  is  elected  as  President, 
becomes  the  head,  as  it  were,  of  the  Executive 
Council  which  is  nominated  by  the  members  of  the 
Volksraad;  that  is,  the  Congress  which  makes  this 
Council  its  representative,  and  they  are  responsible 
to  the  Volksraad.  The  highest  authority  in  the 
state  is  the  Volksraad,  and  that  is  the  body  that  is 


232  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

elected  the  same  as  your  members  of  Congress. 
They  make  the  laws,  and  the  president  of  the  state 
has  only  authority  to  carry  out  these  laws,  but  all  he 
does  with  his  executive  council  is  to  send  them  in 
for  recommendation — the  same  as  your  Congress  is 
doing  in  this  country,  and  for  the  Volksraad  to 
accept  or  reject  them  as  they  think  best.  But  every- 
thing that  is  done  is  done  practically  by  the  Volks- 
raad, which  is  the  representative  body  of  the  electors 
of  the  whole  republic.  And  so,  when  it  is  said  that 
Kruger  is  doing  it,  it  is  accusing  a  man  of  a  certain 
power  which  he  never  possessed.  But  if  a  man  tells 
me  that  Kruger  was  a  strong  man  in  that  state,  then 
I  will  believe  it.  He  was  prepared  to  meet  his  op- 
ponents in  every  way  as  far  as  he  possibly  could,  and 
I  think  so  far  he  has  been  a  noble  man.  That  is  not 
what  my  British  friends  are  after,  as  my  English 
friend  told  me  today.  Eight  years  ago  he  was  going 
to  buy  property — "  But  wait,  a  war  is  coming;  don't 
buy  it  now."  But  as  for  his  power,  the  constitution 
is  plain  on  that,  plain  as  a  pike-staff.  He  is  elected 
by  the  people,  and  the  executive  council  with  him  is 
elected  by  the  Volksraad,  and  anything  that  he  in- 
troduces to  the  executive  council  can  be  rejected  or 
accepted  by  the  Volksraad.  He  proposes  the  meas- 
ures to  be  passed  the  same  as  a  prime  minister  with 
his  cabinet;  and  he  is  defeated  or  he  is  accepted,  as 
the  case  may  be. 

Mr.  John   B.    Olmsted : — I  would  like  to  ask  the 
Commandant  on  what  terms,  if  he  could  so  state  it, 


THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  BOER  233 

a  peace  could  be  negotiated;  if  there  are  any  terms 
that  the  Boers  propose  to  the  British. 

Commandant  Snyman: — There  is  always  in  a 
transaction  a  question  of  give  and  take,  and  I  am 
not  prepared  tonight  to  answer  the  question.  When 
that  question  is  fairly  gone  into  and  people  are  quiet 
and  can  talk  the  matter  over,  we  will  concede,  as  a 
people,  a  great  deal  of  our  independence  to  terminate 
this  war;  but  the  feeling  of  every  man  tonight  is  to 
keep  his  own,  and  that  is  his  independence. 


Resolutions  were  put  and  unanimously  carried 
tendering  the  thanks  of  the  Club  to  Commandant 
Snyman,  Mr.  Brown  and  Mr.  Jones. 


SeconJ)  Dinner. 

3anuarg  15,  1002. 

EDUCATION   AND    SOCIETY. 

REV.    KMIL   G.    HIRSCH. 

I  am  afraid,  Mr.  President,  you  were  somewhat 
rash  in  your  promises.  You  certainly  spoke  more 
truthfully  when  you  said  the  club  was  unfortunate 
to-night,  not  merely  on  account  of  the  regret  of  the 
absence  of  that  worthy  gentleman  who  was  to  preside, 
but  on  account  of  the  speaker  who  is  about  to  ad- 
dress you.  When  I  received  your  kind  invitation  to 
pay  Buffalo  a  visit,  I  was  afraid  that  one  or  the  other 
of  the  Topic  Committee  had  seen  my  picture  as  I 
have  seen  it  when  I  was  out  on  a  lecture  tour.  I 
happened  to  come  into  a  town  where  I  was  billed  for 
the  evening  and  I  found  that  the  committee  had  been 
foolish  enough  to  think  that  my  countenance  would 
be  an  added  charm  wherewith  to  procure  patrons  for 
the  evening  entertainment;  at  all  events  they  had 
pasted  what  purported  to  be  a  representation  of  my 
father's  son  on  the  door  of  a  drug  store  and  it  just 
so  happened  that  the  following  inscription  ran  across 
my  mouth:  ''Open  day  and  night."  (Laughter.) 
Perhaps  you  were  of  the  opinion  that  with  a  good 
dinner  in  the  slot  there  would  come  a  good  speech, 
but  I  am  afraid  the  results  of  the  experiment  will 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  235 

teach  you  to  do  wiser  things  and  better  things  here- 
after.    (Laughter.) 

The  deep  and  sustained  interest  in  education  which 
runs  through  the  American  mind  and  heart  at  the 
present  time  is  one  of  the  most  hopeful  symptoms  of 
American  life.  Every  beginning  of  a  school  year  calls 
an  army  of  young  people  across  the  threshold  of 
unnumbered  school  houses.  Every  June  divisions 
and  brigades  of  young  graduates  are  sent  out  into 
life  to  win  fame  for  themselves.  Call  up  before  the 
American  the  theme  of  education  and  his  heart  will 
respond  spontaneously.  We  have  indeed  a  noble 
system;  the  foundation  upon  which  our  school  plan 
rests  is  solid.  Had  the  American  public  accom- 
plished nothing  more  than  by  example  to  teach  the 
rest  of  the  world  what  the  obligation  of  the  state  is  in 
the  domain  of  education,  the  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  years  of  our  national  existence  would  still  be 
remembered  by  posterity  as  most  significant  in  the 
solution  of  problems  bearing  vitally  upon  the  de- 
velopment of  the  race.  But  of  late  the  opinions 
begin  to  diverge  as  to  what  should  be  the  proper 
sphere  and  scope  of  education.  While  rich  men  are 
endowing  most  abundantly  the  higher  institutions 
of  learning  and  while  our  universities  are  develop- 
ing at  a  pace  which  takes  away  the  breath  of  the 
older  world,  voices  are  not  wanting  to  caution  us 
against  encouraging  young  people  too  rashly  in  enter- 
ing the  more  ambitious  halls  of  higher  learning.  One 
who,  by  dint  of  his  own  energy,  has  risen  to  the  chief- 


236  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

tainship  of  one  of  the  greatest  industrial  combinations 
that  the  last  century  in  its  dying  year  left  to  the  new, 
has  not  hesitated  to  sound  this  note  of  warning: 
granting  that  for  the  professional  man  college  and 
even  university  education  be  required  and  be  profita- 
ble, he  still  contends  that  for  those  who  must  earn 
their  living  with  the  skill  of  their  hands,  time  spent  in 
the  acquisition  of  the  knowledge  that  the  university 
and  the  college  provide  must  be  accounted  wasted. 
He  pointed  to  the  lesson  of  his  own  life;  he  recounted 
the  experience  to  which  he  could  testify  from  personal 
intimate  knowledge.  He  would  have  the  masses 
leave  the  school  when  the  thirteenth  year  has  rounded 
its  circuit  and  take  up  the  hammer  instead  of  the  book; 
instead  of  pawing  over  the  tomes  of  learning  he 
would  have  them  bend  over  the  anvil;  and  doubt- 
lessly Mr.  Schwab  voiced  the  deepest  conviction  of 
many  who  are  vitally  interested  in  the  welfare  and 
the  further  industrial  development  of  our  nation. 
If  we  look  back  upon  the  history  of  education,  we  can 
at  once  comprehend  wherein  lies  the  strength  of  Mr. 
Schwab's  argument  and  wherein  we  come  across  its 
weakness. 

Education,  up  to  perhaps  the  present  century,  was 
regarded  as  a  means  to  one  of  two  ends.  It  was 
either  considered  as  a  method  to  enable  men  to  wage 
successfully  the  battle  of  life,  to  win  comfort  and 
competency  for  themselves,  to  accumulate  wealth, 
scale  the  rounds  on  the  ladder  reaching  from  the  low 
rung  of  actual  hampering  conditions  to  the  highest 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  237 

rung  of  industrial  independence  and  financial  leader- 
ship. Over  and  against  this  utilitarian  view  was  the 
other  conception  which  would  have  education  be  a 
means  to  culture,  regarding  the  struggle  for  existence 
as  inconsequential  in  the  solution  of  the  educational 
equation;  men  pleaded  for  the  enlargement  of  the 
sympathies,  the  widening  of  the  intellectual  and 
moral  horizon  and  contended  that  these  results  could 
be  attained  only  through  a  systematic  mental-gym- 
nastic process,  through  the  storing-up  in  the  mind 
and  heart  of  the  best  thoughts  and  a  knowledge  of  the 
noblest  developments  that  were  recorded  on  the 
tablets  of  time.  Industrial  independence  and  com- 
petency on  the  one  hand,  culture  on  the  other — 
were  the  two  poles  which  were  pointed  out  as  the 
goals  in  the  education  theories  of  the  days  lying  be- 
hind us.  The  common  American  mind  inclined  to 
the  former  view.  Even  in  discussions  that  are  now 
carried  on,  and  carried  on  not  without  heat,  in  the 
city  from  which  I  hail,  the  note  is  still  vibrating  that 
the  public  school  system  shall  serve  primarily  and 
perhaps  ultimately  only  the  end  of  equipping  in  a 
preliminary  way  the  masses  for  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence. Therefore,  whatever  goes  beyond  the  degree 
attained  by  the  grammar  schools  is  declared  to  be  a 
luxury.  High  schools  are  denounced  as  fads;  their 
legitimacy  in  the  public-school  system  is  questioned; 
the  money  every  year  appropriated  for  their  main- 
tenance is  held  to  be  practically  wasted,  or  to  be  an 
extortion  practiced  upon  the  masses  of  the  taxpayers. 


238  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Those  holding  this  view  reinforce  their  decision  by 
an  appeal  to  figures  and  statistics;  they  tell  us  that 
of  the  boys  and  girls  that  enter  the  primary  grades 
no  more  than  sixty  per  cent,  will  proceed  through  the 
grammar  grades  and  of  that  sixty  per  cent,  again,  at 
the  utmost,  twenty  per  cent. — and  if  the  differentia- 
tion of  the  sexes  be  taken  into  consideration,  not  even 
three  per  cent,  will  presevere  and  go  through  the  cur- 
riculum of  our  high  schools.  The  moneys  spent, 
therefore,  they  argue,  for  the  maintenance  and  equip- 
ment of  these  high  schools,  are  spent  in  the  interest 
of  a  privileged  class,  and  as  the  State  should  look 
only  to  the  welfare  of  the  majority,  the  maintenance 
of  the  high  schools  is  declared  to  be  not  within  the 
scope  of  a  well  arranged,  methodical  and  justly 
carried  out  public  school  scheme.  The  utilitarian 
note  prevails  also  in  the  demands  that  nothing  shall 
be  taught  in  the  lower  grades  beyond  the  three  R's 
and  these  three  R's  are  considered  to  be  sufficient 
to  enable  men  and  women  to  do  their  part  in  life, 
to  face  the  problems  of  life  with  an  open  mind  and  a 
stout  heart. 

Now,  it  must  be  granted  that  up  to  a  certain  point 
these  defenders  of  the  utilitarian  theory  have  the 
better  of  the  argument.  It  must  be  granted  that  a 
public  school  system  maintained  by  public  taxation 
cannot  be  indifferent  to  the  practical  results  of  the 
work  done  in  the  school.  Life  calls  and  those  who 
must  go  out  into  life,  must,  by  the  necessities  of  our 
social  organization,  struggle  for  existence.     Nature 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  239 

has  treated  men  with  a  stepmotherly  hand.  While 
the  lion  and  the  elephant  find  a  banquet  of  life  well 
spread,  man  alone,  of  all  the  tenants  of  earth,  has  to 
wrest  from  the  earth  the  means  of  sustenance  and  the 
material  wherewith  to  shelter  himself  against  the 
inclemencies  of  the  climate.  This  natural  law  cannot 
be  modified  and  cannot  be  ignored.  To  meet  what 
this  natural  law  imposes  is  a  necessity  in  the  grasp  of 
which  every  human  being  finds  him  or  herself  and 
education  will  certainly  be  defective  if  this  necessity 
be  ignored.  Still,  those  who  argue  for  the  utilitarian 
application  of  educational  systems  and  in  the  same 
breath  would  have  the  educational  scheme  limited 
to  the  rudiments  of  knowledge,  seem  to  contradict 
in  one  part  or  the  other  of  their  arguments  their  main 
thesis.  They  still  share  the  faith  of  a  buried  genera- 
tion of  educational  theorists;  they  are  still  adherents 
of  a  philosophy  that  nature  has  endowed  every  nor- 
mal man  with  a  sufficient  quantity  of  common  sense; 
that  common  sense  is  the  solvent  for  every  perplexity. 
This  common  sense  apotheosis  is  the  precipitate,  as 
you  remember,  of  eighteenth-century  philosophy, 
predicating  of  men  absolute  equality;  the  thinkers  of 
those  days  who  prepared  the  French  Revolution  and 
dipped  the  pen  into  the  ink  with  which  our  own  glor- 
ious Declaration  of  Independence  was  written,  the 
thinkers  of  those  days  found  in  the  common  sense 
which  they  attributed  to  every  normal  man,  the  cor- 
roboration of  their  philosophical  position,  that  men 
are  created  equal.     They  meant  to  regard  common 


240  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

sense  as  competent  to  decide  without  preliminary 
training,  or  further  inspiration,  or  instruction,  the 
deepest  questions  of  fiscal  policy.  Men  were  to  trust 
in  their  majority  and  the  common  sense  majority  was 
a  declaration  of  God's  own  voice,  rivalling  in  its 
thunder  the  very  peals  of  Sinai  and  in  its  decision  the 
very  sweetness  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  Com- 
mon sense  was  held  to  be  sufficient,  I  say,  to  grapple 
with  the  problems  of  technique;  expert  knowledge 
was  deemed  unnecessary  in  those  days,  and,  for  a  fact, 
the  civilization  that  then  prevailed,  especially  here  in 
our  western  continent,  was  not  complex;  the  problems 
presented  by  political  and  social  life  were  simple.  The 
common  sense  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  settlers  upon  the 
narrow  strip  then  under  cultivation  along  the  Atlantic 
ocean  was  indeed  sufficient  to  find  a  solution  for  every 
political  and  industrial  difficulty  then  staring  them  in 
the  face.  Common  sense  supplied  with  the  rudi- 
ments of  information,  with  a  power  to  read,  to  write 
and  to  cipher  correctly,  was,  in  those  days,  for  good 
reasons,  held  to  be  adequate  to  equip  man  for  the 
struggle  for  existence.  But  in  these  our  days  it  is 
plain  that  mere  rudimentary  educational  knowledge 
does  not  keep  its  pledge.  The  men  who  argue  for 
rudimentary  education  are  also  perhaps  adherents  of 
a  theory  equally  prevalent  with  the  other  school  of 
thinkers  in  the  eighteenth  century,  that  education, 
and  especially  education  of  the  mind,  the  develop- 
ment of  the  intellectual  faculties  and  powers,  would 
be  the  most  powerful  and  always  effective  counter- 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  241 

weight  to  all  the  temptations  to  do  wrong.  "Build 
schoolhouses  and  you  need  not  build  almshouses; 
build  schoolhouses  and  the  population  of  the  peni- 
tentiaries will  decrease" — that  was  the  sublime  faith 
of  the  men  of  the  eighteenth  and  of  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century;  not  merely  in  this  country, 
but  perhaps  the  round  world  over.  Men  high  in 
authority,  men  whose  hearts  were  aglow  with  the  love 
for  their  kind,  called  for  the  school  to  counteract  the 
pernicious  tendencies  that  perhaps  might  find  a  root 
and  a  lodgment  in  the  plastic  hearts  of  the  young. 
Experience  has  taught  us  sadly  that  this  faith  in  the 
efficacy,  the  omnipotence  of  education,  rudimentary 
or  even  higher,  has  not  been  ratified.  We  know  that 
we  have  multiplied  our  schoolhouses,  we  have  in- 
creased our  colleges,  that  our  universities  have  ex- 
panded, their  number  has  grown  larger  and  larger 
and  yet  penitentiaries  have  not  become  a  super- 
fluity, our  penal  institutions  have  not  been  found  to  be 
unnecessary,  our  almshouses  are  still  populated, 
poverty  has  not  been  swept  off  the  face  of  the  globe, 
and,  what  is  worse,  pauperism,  moral  wretchedness, 
vice  in  all  of  its  forms,  is  still  exhibiting  its  rags,  or  its 
painted  sepulchres,  in  the  very  streets  of  the  cities 
that  in  themselves  are  monuments  to  the  thrift,  the 
industry,  the  energy  of  the  most  enlightened  peoples 
on  the  earth.  It  is  true  that  certain  crimes  are  not 
committed  by  the  educated;  crimes  of  violence, 
crimes  due  to  uncontrolled  temper  are  more  apt  to 
be  committed  by  men  of  a  low  degree  of  intellectuality 

16 


243  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

and  of  a  limited  range  of  information,  but  other 
crimes,  crimes  wherein  intellect  is  required,  are  all 
the  more  easily  executed  if  the  intellect  has  been 
'^  trained,  and  the  reasoning  power  sharpened.  The 
forger,  for  instance,  requires  a  certain  degree  of  skill; 
he  must  be  acquainted  with  the  mysteries  of  arith- 
metic; he  must  know  how  to  read.  It  is  not  true  that 
the  more  of  education  is  given  to  the  people  the  less 
their  temptation  to  rise  up  against  those  in  authority 
over  them.  We  know,  for  instance,  that  the  chemist 
invents  new  combinations  owing  to  his  peeps  into 
the  secrets  of  nature.  He  arms  the  nations  with  new 
high  explosives;  but  the  very  chemist  who  thus 
equips  his  nation  with  a  stronger  defense  puts  also 
,  within  the  reach  of  an  insane,  an  abnormal  brain,  or 
even  of  a  vicious  brain,  all  that  is  necessary  for  the 
possessor  of  that  brain  to  carry  out  his  nefarious  plots 
and  intentions.  Electricity  certainly  is  a  triumph  of 
man  over  the  energies  of  nature.  To  bind  the  light- 
ning to  our  chariot,  to  tether  to  our  vehicles  carrying 
the  products  of  our  industry,  the  mysterious  power 
which  leaps  from  cloud  to  cloud,  to  chase  away  the 
horrors  of  the  night  and  to  rival  by  the  brilliancy  of  a 
light  hour  in  Buffalo  the  very  stars  of  the  heavens, 
tells  in  thousandfold  voices  of  the  triumph  of  man, 
his  supremacy,  his  royal  crownship  and  kingship  over 
the  forces  that  otherwise  and  erstwhile  terrified  him. 
But  the  same  power  which  we  have  chained  arms  the 
burglar  with  a  new  tool.  He  utilizes  for  his  own  ne- 
farious intentions  what  civilization  has  brought.  It 


EDUCA  TION  AND  SOCIETY  243 

is  for  him  a  new  weapon  in  his  warfare  against  and 
upon  organized  society.  Therefore  this  childlike 
faith  in  the  omnipotence  of  education,  higher  or 
lower,  as  a  counteracting  power  or  influence  to  vice 
and  to  crime  must  be  relegated  to  the  lumber  room 
where  are  stored  the  beautiful  visions  of  an  age  less 
tried  and  less  steeled  in  the  hard  school  of  disappoint- 
ing experience  than  our  generation  may  claim  to  be. 
Is  education  therefore  a  failure  ?  To  a  certain  extent 
it  has  been  a  failure,  and  why  .?  The  difficulty  is  easy 
to  comprehend.  At  the  root  of  all  these  theories  is 
the  one  misconception  that  education  is  a  process  of 
transmitting  information.  The  public  schools  in 
America  have  certainly  since  the  days  when  I  was  an 
unfortunate  victim  of  the  then  prevailing  system, 
made  rapid  progress.  When  I  was  forced  to  attend 
public  schools  we  were  in  the  hands  of  teachers  who 
had  no  higher  notions  of  the  amplification  of  their 
vocation  than  that  they  were  the  regulators  of  the 
process  of  tapping  a  barrel  of  knowledge  and  letting 
it  out  into  our  infantile  brains  by  means  of  an  auger 
or  gimlet, — they  opened  at  a  certain  hole  made  in  our 
skulls  and  the  hose  was  inserted  into  that  hole  and 
after  a  certain  quantity  of  the  fluid  had  run  off*,  the 
hose  was  withdrawn  and  the  skull  was  plugged  up 
again.  The  consequence  was  that  most  of  us  came 
from  the  school  room  with  skulls  thoroughly  plugged 
up.  (Laughter).  We  had  a  certain  quantity  of  in- 
formation, it  was  true,  disorganized  information,  that 
was  called  education.     To  a  certain  extent  we  have 


244  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

not  yet  grown  beyond  this  misconception  of  the  im- 
plications of  education.  We  still  believe  that  edu- 
cation is  a  process  of  transmitting  information;  that  it 
is  the  teacher's  part  to  measure  out  the  quantities — 
well  shaken  before  taken — and  to  regulate  the  dose§ 
that  must  be  safely  given  to  the  patient, — the  poor 
child.  And  we  believe  that  certain  nostrums  of  ours, 
certain  quack  or  proprietary  medicines  of  ours,  if 
.  given  in  certain  quantities,  will  make  the  recipient 
thereof  an  educated  person.  This  view  is  rapidly 
disappearing,  but  in  our  public  school  system  and 
even  in  our  universities,  the  results  of  this  misconcep- 
tion are  still  prevailing  to  too  large  an  extent.  That 
misconception  led  to  a  thought  that  education  meant 
to  equip  the  individual  either  for  his  pleasure  or  for 
the  performance  of  a  task  which  would  be  profitable. 
to  HIM,  the  individual.  I  say  either  for  his  pleasure, 
for  culture  in  the  higher  realms  of  education  was  also 
regarded  merely  as  a  means  to  the  pleasure,  to  the 
spiritual  or  intellectual  pleasure,  of  the  cultivated  per- 
son. That  the  individual  owes  something  to  society; 
that  education  coming  from  society  shall  not  aim  at 
giving  to  the  individual  something  for  the  individ- 
ual's sake,  but  should  aim  to  equip  the  individual 
to  take  his  place  in  society  as  a  worker  and  contribu- 
tor toward  society's  wealth, — this  thought  is  only  just 
now  dawning  upon  the  educational  horizon  and  this 
thought  is  the  redeeming  gospel  of  the  new  education. 
It  will  at  once  break  with  the  tradition  that  educa- 
tion is  a  means  to  make  the  recipient  a  better  fighter 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  245 

for  himself  in  his  struggle  for  existence;  it  will  at 
once  put  an  end  to  the  exaggerated  value  put  upon 
culture,  a  culture  which  is  always  selfish  and  a  culture 
which  therefore  is  always  cramped  and  narrow,  culture 
which  at  its  best  means  merely  to  equip  the  possessor 
to  spend  a  few  hours — not  profitably  to  another — but 
pleasurably  and  profitably  to  himself.  That  educa- 
tion is  for  society,  because  it  is  through  society, 
is  basic  to  our  system.  Otherwise  there  is  no  justi- 
fication for  the  insistence  that  the  state  as  the  state 
shall  provide  for  education.  If  it  is  merely  meant  to 
equip  the  individual  with  better  tools  wherewith  he 
may  win  a  richer  return  from  life,  then  the  state  as  the 
organized  force  of  society  has  no  right  and  no  call  to 
provide  for  such  an  equipment.  It  is  indeed  held 
that  the  state  must  educate  citizens  and  the  state 
should  educate  citizens.  This  is,  however,  merely 
stating  the  proposition  in  other  terms.  The  citizen 
has  duties  as  well  as  rights;  the  citizen  who  knows 
what  citizenship  implies  will  not  regard  his  life,  his 
power,  as  his  own.  He  knows  that  he  owes  what  he 
is  to  the  state,  that  he  has  obligations  to  the  state; 
that  to  neglect  these  obligations  is,  in  a  republican 
form  of  government,  high  treason.  The  right  to  vote 
includes  the  duty  to  vote;  the  franchise  of  freedom 
involves  the  recognition  that  only  those  have  a  right 
to  be  free  who  will,  of  their  freedom  and  in  their  free- 
dom, help  the  general  life  of  others  through  political 
institutions.  Therefore  to  say  that  the  state  must  pro- 
vide for  the  public  school  because  it  is  the  state's  duty 


346  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

to  train  a  future  citizen,  is  stating  merely  that  the 
state  or  organized  society  must  provide  for  education 
because  education  has  the  intention  and  the  ulti- 
mate purpose  not  so  much  to  equip  the  individual 
for  his  individual  struggle,  or  his  individual  pleasure; 
but  to  equip  him  to  become  a  contributor,  a  creative 
co-operator  in  and  to  the  vsrealth  of  society.  If  this 
is  recognized,  the  question  urged  by  Mr.  Schv^ab 
as  well  as  the  arguments  advanced  by  the  defenders  of 
culture  studies  and  the  opportunities  of  college  and 
university  research  are  at  once  found  to  be  one-sided. 
There  is  truth  in  either  position,  but  the  higher  truth 
is  found  and  expressed  on  the  higher  level,  under  the 
influence  of  the  recognition  that  education  is  meant 
and  must  be  meant  to  equip  the  individual  for  a  con- 
tributary  w^ork  in  the  great  cause  of  all — the  life  of 
organized  society. 

Our  education  has  made  thousands  and  thousands 
of  men  misfits.  This  cannot  be  denied.  When  we 
look  abroad  upon  the  ocean  of  life  we  find  its  shores 
strewn  with  wreckage.  It  is  not  merely  the  clothing 
merchant  who  has  to  deal  with  misfits;  the  criminal 
lawyer  deals  with  misfits — if  he  himself  is  not  one 
(laughter);  the  physician  to-day  deals  with  misfits; 
the  clergyman  certainly,  also  himself  a  misfit,  finds 
his  parish  and  congregation  many  to  make  him  feel 
the  comforts  to  a  miserable  one  of  having  fellows  in 
his  wretchedness.  The  world  is  full  of  misfits.  We 
find  in  round  holes  men  who  are  square  pegs;  and 
again  we  find  round  pegs  that  have  not  found  the 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  247 

places  where  they  belong.  Here  and  there  a  man 
finds  his  own  position.  The  laws  that  prevail  in  the 
general  sphere  cannot  be  applied  to  genius.  Amer- 
ica has  produced  genius.  The  advantages  of  our  then 
still  unconquered  continent,  the  necessities  of  our 
growing  civilization,  have  aroused  in  many  minds  and 
many  hearts  the  divine  spark  which  flashes  forth  in 
the  minds  and  in  the  hearts  of  only  those  that  are 
above  the  level  of  the  common  majority, — men  of 
genius.  There  may  be  genius  in  the  pioneer  farmer 
and  there  certainly  was  genius  in  the  man  who  went 
out  to  reclaim  the  untamed  west.  There  may  be 
genius  in  the  man  that  strips  the  rails — the  man  who 
by  rail-splitting,  by  dint  of  his  own  untamed  but 
divine  energy,  rises  to  the  chair  of  the  President  of  a 
nation  and  falls  the  last  victim  to  seal,  by  his  own 
blood,  the  new  covenant  of  a  renewed  fraternity  of 
states.  These  were  men  of  genius.  These  men  were 
evoked  only  under  rare  times  and  rare  conditions. 
The  conditions  that  prevailed  fifty  years  ago  in  the 
west  are  rapidly  passing  away;  we  know  that  we  are 
becoming,  as  it  were,  an  ancient  civilization — the 
pressure  has  increased  and  therefore  all  the  more 
urgent  is  the  call  for  an  educational  system  which 
will  do  for  the  generation  of  to-morrow  what  the 
prairies  did  and  the  mountains  did  and  the  untouched 
forest  did  for  the  fathers  who  went  out,  God  in  their 
hearts  and  courage  in  their  souls,  the  divine  spark 
of  manliness  blazing  in  their  brains,  to  carve  out  for 
themselves  their  future  and  to  prepare  the  way,  a 


248  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

happy  way,  for  those  who  were  to  come  after  them. 
(Applause.) 

Education  to-day  must  be  explorative,  in  the  first 
place.  Through  the  school  men  must  be  brought  to 
find  themselves;  they  must  be  able  to  discover  for 
what  nature,  talent,  or  perhaps  even  genius,  has  des- 
tined them.  As  it  is  to-day,  we  apply  one  rule  to  all. 
Abnormal  children  either  fall  behind  or  go  beyond 
the  grade  level.  Those  that  are  extraordinary,  be 
they  eccentric  on  account  of  weakness  or  eccentric 
on  account  of  superabundance  of  strength,  do  not  find 
furtherance,  they  find  in  many  cases  hindrance  in  the 
prevailing  educational  system,  and  many  boys  leave 
the  school  because  it  has  lost  all  interest  for  them. 
Some,  of  course,  are  called  away  from  the  school  by 
the  social  pressure;  they  must  become  bread-winners; 
young  as  they  are,  they  must  help  the  father  and  the 
mother  to  provide  for  the  needs  of  a  large  and  a  grow- 
ing family.  But  these  cases  might  be  reduced  to  a 
much  lower  percentage  if  our  public  school  were  in- 
deed a  station  of  exploration,  an  experimental  labora- 
tory where  certain  studies  and  discipline  were  intro- 
duced with  a  view  to  helping  the  boy  to  discover  for 
himself  and  the  girl  to  find  out  what  indeed  nature 
and  talent  have  destined  them.  As  it  is,  we  merely 
train  the  brain,  and  according  to  my  opinion,  the 
brain  is  trained  largely  along  one-sided  lines.  The 
memory  perhaps  is  developed;  the  thinking  faculty 
not  so  much.  We  allow,  in  our  ordinary  school  sys- 
tem, the  hand  to  be  neglected,  and  the  heart  in  most 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  249 

cases  is  also  left  out  of  consideration.  The  moral 
nature,  through  a  confusion  of  what  moral  training 
implies,  through  the  right  principle  that  religion  and 
religious  influences  of  a  sectarian  kind  shall  not  be 
given  the  privileges  of  our  school  system — the  moral 
nature,  I  say,  is  also  permitted  to  lie  fallov^;  it  is  not 
developed.  We  must,  in  our  public  schools,  find 
means  to  train  and  therefore  to  explore  the  trinity 
of  normal  men's  faculties:  the  brain,  the  hand  and  the 
heart; — the  mind,  the  seat  of  intellect,  the  heart,  the 
seat  of  emotion  and  of  will,  as  it  were;  and  the  hand 
the  executive  organ.  That  can  be  done  only  if,  in 
addition  to  what  is  commonly  known  as  the  literary 
studies — reading,  writing,  geography,  history — a  well- 
conceived  system  of  manual  training  shall  be  intro- 
duced into  every  public  school,  from  the  kindergarten 
up  through  the  high  school,  even  unto  the  college. 
(Applause).  As  it  is  now,  those  whom  nature  has 
intended  to  be  clerks  perhaps  find  what  they  should 
find  in  our  public  schools;  but  those  whom  nature 
has  intended  to  be  workers  with  their  hands,  leave 
the  public  school  as  they  enter  it;  nothing  has  been 
done  to  make  them  feel  that  they  are  gifted  with  the 
skill  which  the  clerk  does  not  need  and  the  clerk  does 
not  possess;  and  both  the  clerk  and  the  man  who  is  to 
work  with  his  hands  go  out  into  life,  only  in  rare  cases 
knowing  what  the  depths  of  their  souls  contain,  feel- 
ing the  influence  of  a  morality  which  shall  speak  of 
duty  to  them  and  not  always  of  rights. 
You  say  that  is  impossible.    I  have  the  great  pleas- 


250  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

ure  of  inviting  you  to  pay  a  visit  to  a  school  that  was 
largely  founded  through  my  own  instrumentality  in 
Chicago.  The  kindness  of  the  Czar  of  Russia  in  1883 
drove  from  the  pale  where  five  millions  of  Jews  are 
horded  together  in  a  state  of  misery  compared  to 
which  the  fate  of  the  Boer  women  in  the  concentra- 
tion camps  of  South  Africa  spells  paradise;  the  kind- 
ness of  the  Czar  of  Russia  in  1883  drove  hundreds 
and  thousands  of  Russian  Jews  across  the  ocean. 
They  came  to  this  country  asking  for  shelter,  begging 
for  reception.  At  home  they  had  been  denied  the 
privilege  of  breathing,  the  privilege  of  working,  sim- 
ply because  they  would  not  accept  the  Greek  Ortho- 
dox faith.  Coming  here,  we,  their  nearer  friends  by 
reason  of  our  racial  affinity,  and  also  through  the 
higher  spiritual  efficacy  of  our  religious  sympathies 
with  them,  felt  that  we  would  not  be  true  to  our  obli- 
gation to  them  or  to  the  community  at  large  if  we 
stood  by  indifferent  to  this  tidal  wave  of  wretched- 
ness and  misery.  We  found  out  that  to  reclaim  the 
grown-up  among  them  from  the  consequences  of  the 
tyranny  which  had  lain  upon  them  for  400  years  was 
perhaps  impossible;  but  we  saw  the  hope  of  saving 
the  young,  of  making  them  a  type  of  the  highest 
American  spirtual  incarnation  in  their  bodies,  and  so 
in  Chicago  we  resolved  to  establish  a  model  school, 
primarily  for  the  needs  of  the  children  of  these  Rus- 
sian Jewish  refugees.  From  the  kindergarten  to  the 
high  school  every  study  of  the  public  school  is  also 
introduced  into  this  school;  but,  besides  the  so-called 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  261 

literary  studies,  we  have  from  the  lowest  to  the  high- 
est grades  a  systematic  elaboration  of  manual  train- 
ing. What  has  been  the  result  ?  We  have  no  more 
hours  at  our  disposal  than  has  the  public  school, 
and  while  in  the  public  school  the  children  leave  the 
school,  say  forty  per  cent,  in  the  third  year  and  of  the 
rest,  the  sixty  per  cent.,  not  more  than  fifty  will  go  to 
the  graduating  class  of  the  grammar  grade,  and  these 
children  are  all  children  of  parents  that  work  mostly 
for  seven  and  eight  dollars  a  week;  in  this  school  we 
do  not  lose  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  more  than 
one-half  per  cent,  of  the  enrolled  scholars.  Why  this  ? 
Because  the  interest  of  the  children  is  sustained. 
The  child  wants  something  to  do,  not  merely  some- 
thing to  learn.  We  know  that.  Helen's  babies  want 
to  see  the  wheels  go  around,  and  Helen's  babies  will 
destroy  the  trumpet  after  they  get  tired  of  making 
noise.  Yea,  one  writer  on  their  life  maintains  that 
when  the  baby  yells  it  is  not  a  sign  of  physical  discom- 
fort, but  the  baby,  by  raising  a  howl,  is  merely 
^  indulging  in  exercises — wants  to  do  something. 
(Laughter.)  Even  the  baby  is  tired  of  doing  nothing. 
And  here  in  our  public  schools,  after  they  have 
learned  that  there  is  nothing  to  do  and  the  boy  begins 
to  whittle,  that  is  an  infraction  of  the  rule;  he  destroys 
the  property  of  society;  the  boy  begins  to  whisper,  he 
is  a  bad  boy  and  he  is  sent  home  with  a  note;  the  chil- 
dren are  complained  about  to  the  father  and  the 
mother.  The  boy  grows  tired  of  this;  he  leaves  the 
school;  he  wants  to  help,  he  wants  to  do  something. 


262  '^HE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

This  natural  endowment  of  the  propensity  for  doing 
something  is  utilized  in  the  school  of  which  I  speak. 
But  the  result  has  also  been  that  among  these  chil- 
dren of  the  poorest  Jews — foreigners  at  that — we 
have  succeeded  in  discovering  some  that  were  by 
nature  gifted  to  become  artists;  others  that  were  by 
nature  intended  to  be  engineers;  others  that  developed 
a  certain  bent  in  another  direction;  and  after  they 
had  passed  through  our  school  it  was  an  easy  matter 
for  these  to  find  the  place  for  which  they  were  fitted. 
Of  the  children  in  that  school  (in  existence  only  since 
1885)  not  one  has  ever  been  brought  up  before  the 
juvenile  court,  while  of  the  children  of  the  same  grade 
in  the  neighborhood,  of  one  hundred  children  at  least 
sixty  are  in  regular  turn  brought  before  the  juvenile 
court;  not  one  case  has  come  to  the  notice  of  the  juv- 
enile court  where  the  defendant  was  either  a  graduate 
or  a  pupil  of  this  Jewish  manual-training  school. 
That  was  not  due  to  the  superior  morality  originally 
of  these  children,  for  their  playmates,  of  Jewish  faith, 
that  had  not  entered  that  school,  were  among  those 
who  were  arrested  and  brought  before  the  juvenile 
court,  but  was  due  to  the  fact  that  those  children 
found  an  outlet  for  their  natural  propensity  to  do 
something.  A  boy  who  runs  around  the  street  wants 
to  do  something.  He  will  hurl  a  stone  into  a  window; 
he  is  arrested.  He  wants  to  do  something.  He 
plays  robber  because  he  wants  to  do  something.  His 
imagination  runs  wild  with  him.  He  cannot  utilize 
his  imagination  in  construction.    If  the  public  school 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  253 

— and  the  cost  of  my  school  is  even  less  than  that  of 
the  public  school — were  to  conceive  of  the  new  im- 
plication of  education,  that  education  must  be  ex- 
plorative in  order  to  fit  the  person  for  his  proper  place 
in  society,  half  of  the  defendants  in  our  juvenile 
courts  would  not  be  cited  there;  they  would  have 
found  an  outlet  for  their  natural  desire  for  activity. 
As  it  is,  that  natural  desire  now  finds  its  vent  in  mis- 
chief, in  destruction,  where  otherwise  it  would  find 
its  vent  and  its  utilization  in  construction  and  in 
profitable  and  pleasurable  work. 

Again,  after  the  school  has  explored  the  character, 
my  school  takes  these  children  according  to  their 
fitness  and  assigns  them  in  the  higher,  so-called  high- 
school  grades,  to  different  departments  according  to 
our  discovery;  those  that  have  the  artistic  inclination 
are  given  the  opportunity  to  develop  that;  those  that 
are  intended  by  nature,  for  the  work  of  the  artisan, 
are  taken  into  the  trade  school.  The  organization  of 
labor  in  our  country  has  done  away  with  the  appren- 
tice system.  The  organizations  of  labor  want  to 
reduce  the  supply  of  hands.  Therefore  they  have 
taken  into  their  head  the  crude  method  of  accom- 
plishing this  desire  by  curtailing  the  privileges  of  ap- 
prenticeship in  the  different  trades.  Here  is  one  of 
the  greatest  difficulties  confronting  the  young  Ameri- 
can,— what  shall  he  do  ?  He  cannot  learn  a  trade 
systematically.  Therefore,  our  educational  system 
is  defective.  If  we  are  to  make  our  future  citizens 
contributors  to  the  wealth  of  society,  we  must  see  to 


254  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

it  that  we  provide  them  with  the  opportunity  for 
learning  that  occupation  through  which  they  may 
become  useful  to  themselves  and  to  others.  There- 
fore, in  my  school  we  have  trade  schools.  These 
trade  schools  are  not  an  expense,  they  are  not  a  bur- 
den; they  are  even  profitable;  and  this  fact  keeps 
them  within  our  control  because,  instead  of  going 
as  cash  boys  and  earning  two  dollars  a  week,  by  learn- 
ing a  trade,  from  the  very  beginning  these  boys  and 
girls  earn  something  which  will  help  their  fathers  in 
the  struggle  for  existence.  Exploration  and  then  op- 
portunity to  develop  is  one  of  the  rigid  demands  of 
the  new  implications  of  the  educational  system.  There 
are  others  that  are  intended  for  the  higher  walks,  as 
we  call  them,  of  life, — for  professions.  They,  too, 
shall,  through  a  well-constructed  system  of  school 
discipline,  find  themselves  and  in  the  higher  institu- 
tions of  learning  find  what  we  give  through  the  trade 
schools  to  those  who  must  go  into  other  channels. 

What  will  be  now  the  effect  upon  society  of  a  sytem 
carried  out  to  the  least  and  last  detail  of  an  education 
constructed  along  these  lines  .'*  We  know  that  dis- 
content is  rife  in  every  country.  W^e  believed  twenty 
years  ago  that  political  emancipation  would  of  itself 
lead  to  social  contentment.  We  believed  that  political 
independence  was  the  gateway  to  economic  inde- 
pendence. The  last  twenty  years  have  disillusion- 
ized us.  It  is  true  that  the  typical  American  whose 
eye  has  never  reached  out  beyond  the  nation,  who  is  of 
the  narrow  American  mind  that  he  believes  that  his 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  265 

country  is  the  best — and  it  is  the  best — and  therefore 
concludes  that  his  country  has  nothing  to  learn  from 
other  countries,  it  is  true  that  this  typical  American 
would  make  an  intellectual  and  a  moral  China  of  our 
beloved  republic;  especially  these  Americans  shrug 
their  shoulders  and  say,  "Social  discontent  is  an  im- 
portation from  abroad;  make  the  bars  more  rigid 
against  immigration;  keep  them  out,  these  foreigners 
and  the  scorpion  of  discontent  will  soon  be  throttled 
and  smothered."  Let  me  grant,  for  argument's  sake, 
that  discontent  of  this  kind  is  an  importation  from 
abroad.  We  know  that  we  can  import  plague  germs 
into  this  country  and  the  plague  germ  will  not  spread 
unless  there  are  conditions  which  prosper  the  plague 
germ.  You  can  bring  cholera  over  here.  It  is  inocu- 
ous  as  soon  at  the  conditions  of  the  cities  in  respect 
to  public  hygiene  have  fortified  them  against  the  in- 
vasion of  the  germ.  That  is  shown  by  the  experience 
of  Havana  under  American  rule — formerly  swept  and 
devastated  by  yellow  fever.  This  year  the  dreaded 
terror  of  the  black  vomit  has  been  laughed  to  scorn. 
If  the  germ  be  imported  there  must  be  conditions  in 
our  country  which  make  for  spread  of  that  germ. 
Some  have  said  that  this  social  discontent  has  been 
due  to  over-education,  not  to  under-education.  In 
Germany  they  have  argued  for  restriction  of  the  edu- 
cational privilege;  they  have  said  since  the  masses 
began  to  read  and  since  petroleum  has  become  so 
cheap  they  have  spent  their  nights  in  reading.  What 
did  a  laboring  man  a  generation  ago  know  of  Marx 


256  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

and  of  Lassale  ?  What  did  he  know  of  the  literature 
of  the  social  agitators  ?  Nothing.  Today  he  reads. 
Coal  oil  is  cheap.  Formerly  he  would  have  to  read 
himself  blind  because  the  tallow  candle  flickered. 
Now  he  can  go  and  turn  on  the  electric  light  and 
turn  it  out — he  reads  and  he  reads.  "Take  them 
out  of  school  and  they  will  become  contented.**  No 
American  will  subscribe  to  this.  That  is  treason  to 
our  flag.  But  discontent  is  there.  And  Germans 
have  said  the  social  discontent  is  largely  a  question 
of  the  stomach,  the  magen  frage;  it  is  a  struggle  for 
more  to  eat.  The  reason  is  misconceived  of  the  fun- 
damentals upon  which  the  social  question  has  arisen. 
What  is  it  that  makes  the  workingman  so  discon- 
tented even  in  this  country .?  He  feels  that  he  is 
stinted  in  his  humanity.  It  is  not  that  he  cries  out 
against  work,  but  work  has  become  of  such  a  kind 
that  the  joy  has  departed  therefrom.  Ruskin  is 
right  when  he  says  life  without  work  is  bestiality, 
but  work  without  joy  is  slavery.  Formerly  a  work- 
ingman made  a  whole  shoe,  he  constructed  a  work  of 
art,  he  saw  it  grow,  he  saw  it  develop.  Today  we 
have  reduced  men  to  a  mere  little  pivot  in  a  great 
industrial  piece  of  machinery — peg!  peg!  peg!  peg! — 
the  same,  the  same,  in  monotonous  imitation,  from 
morning  till  night,  from  morning  till  night,  from 
morning  till  night.  He  does  not  know  to  what  part 
he  is  adding  the  peg;  he  does  not  understand,  does 
not  see  the  relation  between  the  peg  and  the  hole. 
The  joy,  the  artistic  joy  has  gone  out  of  his  work  and 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  257 

therefore  has  also  gone  out  of  his  Hfe.  Here  is  the 
root.  Our  system  of  education  is  bound  to  counter- 
act this  tendency  to  pessimism,  to  hypochondriac 
melancholy  which  is  bound  to  result  in  social  dis- 
content. Make  men  again  masters  of  their  work 
and  that  can  only  be  done  if  the  great  laws  of  creative 
energy  are  known  to  men.  The  workingman  needs 
the  broader  culture  because  the  work  he  is  bound 
to  do  has  become  narrower.  He  must  know  himself, 
feel  that  he  is  a  creator.  The  factory  system  is  not 
forever,  it  is  not  ultimate.  I  myself  believe  that, 
owing  to  progress  in  electricty,  the  time  is  not  far 
distant  when  we  can  return  to  the  better  system  of 
independent  house  industry.  With  the  passing  of 
the  factory  system  the  tenement  house  question 
will  be  solved;  but  until  that  day  comes,  we  must 
supply  the  moral  energy  which  will  lift  work  again  to 
the  regions  of  artistic  joy  because  it  rests  on  the  high 
peak  of  creative  energy;  and  education,  the  public 
school  system,  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest,  must 
devote  itself  to  the  accomplishment  of  this  result. 
Our  political  life  too  will  be  lifted  to  a  higher  plane. 
What  is  the  trouble  ?  On  the  one  hand  we  have 
today  selfishness;  we  are  too  busy  making  money  to 
devote  time  to  the  public  welfare.  Once  in  a  while, 
every  four  years,  we  are  stirred — the  President  is  to 
be  elected;  but  if  in  Buffalo  the  same  conditions 
prevail  as  in  Chicago,  we  deem  the  sale  of  a  pair  of 
trousers  of  vital  importance  in  comparison  to  taking 
an  interest  in  the  selection  of  our  alderman.     If  the 

17 


268  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

same  conditions  prevail  here  as  they  do  in  Chicago, 
we  leave  the  administration  of  our  city  to  such  great 
statesmen  as  Hinky-Dink,  a  saloon-keeper,  and  Bath- 
House  John,  originally  a  bath-house  attendant. 
They  settle  the  complex  questions  of  franchise  priv- 
ileges; they  legislate  on  public  hygiene  and  public 
morality;  they  are  "the  boys;'*  we  are  too  busy;  I  am 
too  busy  writing  sermons,  you  are  busy  writing  briefs, 
the  other  one  is  busy  writing  prescriptions,  the  fourth 
one  is  busy  writing  checks,  the  fifth  one  is  busy  cut- 
ting coupons,  the  sixth  one  is  busy  cutting  cloth  to 
make  a  pair  of  trousers  or  an  overcoat — we  are  too 
busy.  Therefore,  these  men  have  made  their  busi- 
ness. Why  are  we  too  busy?  Because  from  our 
earliest  childhood  we  have  been  taught  to  believe  that 
the  highest  aim  of  man  is  to  make  himself  independ- 
ent, to  work  for  himself  and  to  have  but  little  time 
left  to  work  for  others.  And  again,  the  politicians  make 
politics  their  business.  I  don't  blame  them.  Wher- 
ever there  is  a  politician  it  comes  because  we  have 
been  derelict  in  our  duties.  Politics  is  also  the 
scheme  to  make  something  for  self,  not  for  society. 
But,  weigh  it  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest,  the 
idea  ruling  in  education  that  it  is  meant  for  us  to  be 
something  for  others,  our  political  life  must  of  neces- 
sity be  lifted  into  a  clearer  and  into  a  healthier  atmos- 
phere. 

I  hope  that  I  have  not  wearied  you  too  much.  I 
may  sum  up  my  weak  argument  by  recaUing  to  you 
two  pictures  that  I  saw  when  on  a  visit  in  Paris  in 


EDUCATION  AND  SOCIETY  259 

1889.  The  French  Government  had  intended,  and 
had  carried  out  that  intention  most  successfully  by 
a  collection  of  historical  pictures,  to  bring  before  the 
eyes  of  the  people  the  spirit  of  the  French  Revolution 
and  its  subsequent  results  in  the  development  of  the 
various  nations.  In  the  hall  where  these  pictures 
were  on  exhibition  I  found  two  by  one  and  the  same 
master;  they  were  pendants,  one  to  the  other.  Under- 
neath one  was  written  the  figure  "  1789;"  underneath 
the  other,  "1889."  On  the  canvas  devoted  to  the 
exhibition  of  the  ruling  passions,  the  guiding  ambi- 
tions of  the  French  Revolution,  you  beheld  the  people 
breaking  its  chains,  people  rising  to  arms;  you  saw  in 
the  background  the  ruins  of  the  Bastile;  you  saw  the 
multitude  march  behind  a  banner  and  upon  that  ban- 
ner, tinged  in  blood  and  haloed  in  a  splendor  which 
we  call  that  of  the  sun,  you  found  the  inscription 
"Droit!" — rights;  and  1789  was  indeed  the  culminat- 
ing year  of  the  philosphy  of  rights, — the  rights  of 
man,  the  rights  of  the  nations  to  govern  themselves, 
the  rights  of  the  lowest  to  political  equality.  On  the 
canvas  of  1889  the  master  had  painted  a  conclave  of 
workingmen,  of  students,  of  investigators,  of  his 
torians,  of  soldiers  and  of  sailors,  of  bankers  and  of 
kings  of  industry.  They  were  all  apparently  under 
the  consecration  of  a  high  idea.  Their  faces  did  not 
betray  struggle,  but,  on  the  contrary,  they  were 
wreathed  in  the  smiles  of  peaceful  contentment.  But 
on  the  table  toward  which  the  eyes  of  all  were  turned 
was  exposed  something  that  looked  like  a  Bible  and 


260  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB      . 

on  the  open  page  was  written  in  golden  letters  the 
legend  "Devoir!" — duty.  The  painter  caught  the 
spirit  of  the  new  age,  the  successor  of  revolution. 
Revolution  was  under  the  consecration  of  the  struggle 
for  rights.  Our  twentieth  century  civilization  must 
dedicate  itself  to  the  philosophy  of  duty  and  that 
philosophy  will  spell  for  the  individual,  not  individual 
success,  but  contribution  to  the  betterment  of  life, 
the  deepening  of  soul  and  heart  and  mind,  the 
strengthening  of  hand  of  all.  From  the  All  we  come 
what  we  are;  we  are  through  the  All.  To  the  All 
therefore  we  must  give  back  something  of  that  which 
we  call  our  own,  which  we,  however,  have  only  under 
our  trusteeship.  Enough  of  the  philosophy  of  rights. 
Let  today  sound,  and  especially  in  the  school  room; 
let  it  there  be  carried  into  practical  experience,  the 
philosophy  of  duty,  duty  of  man  to  man,  duty  to  self 
and  through  self  to  others,  duty  of  the  citizen  to  the 
state,  the  state  to  humanity;  duty,  in  other  words,  of 
the  creature  to  the  Creator,  of  the  individual  to 
society.     (Great  applause). 


XS:bitt>  Dinner, 

ifebruars  4,  1902, 

1  p.  M. 

THE  STAGE  AND  THE  ACTOR. 

SIR  HENRY  IRVING. 

I  have  chosen  as  my  object  The  Stage  and  the 
Actor,  because  I  take  it  for  granted  that  whenever  you 
bestow  on  any  man  the  honor  of  asking  him  to  address 
you,  it  is  your  wish  to  hear  him  speak  of  the  sub- 
ject with  which  he  is  best  acquainted.  I  have  set 
out  upon  the  one  subject  to  which  my  life  has  been 
devoted.  It  is  a  vast  one.  Writers,  such  as  Vol- 
taire, Schlegel,  Goethe,  Schiller,  Lamb,  Hazlitt  and 
others,  have  not  disdained  to  treat  it  with  that  serious- 
ness which  all  art  demands — which  anything  in  life 
requires,  whose  purpose  is  not  immediate  and  im- 
perative. 

For  my  own  part,  I  can  only  bring  to  you  the  ex- 
perience of  hard  and  earnest  work  for  nearly  fifty  years, 
and  out  of  this  experience  let  me  point  out  that  there 
are  many  degrees  of  merit,  both  of  aim,  of  endeavor 
and  of  execution.  I  want  you  to  think  of  acting  as  it 
may  be  and  as  it  is,  whilst  followed  by  men  and 
women  of  strong  and  earnest  purposes.  I  do  not  for 
a  moment  wish  you  to  believe  that  only  Shakespeare 
and  the  great  writers  are  worthy  of  playing,  and  that 
only  those  efforts  that  have  gathered  themselves 
around  great  names  are  worthy  of  praise. 


262  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

In  the  house  of  art  are  many  mansions  where  men 
may  strive  worthily.  All  art  is  worthy  and  can  seri- 
ously be  considered  so  long  as  the  intention  be  good 
and  the  efforts  to  achieve  success  be  conducted  with 
seemliness. 

The  art  of  the  actor  has  been  defined  "  to  fathom 
the  depths  of  character,  to  trace  its  latent  motives, 
to  feel  its  finest  quiverings  of  emotion,  to  compre- 
hend the  thoughts  that  are  hidden  under  words  and 
thus  possess  oneself  of  the  actual  mind  of  the  indi- 
vidual man."  Talma,  the  great  French  writer,  spoke 
of  it  as  "the  union  of  grandeur  without  pomp,  and 
nature  without  trivialty.'*  The  effort  to  reproduce 
man  in  his  moods  is  no  mere  trick  of  fancy  carried  into 
execution,  it  is  a  part  of  the  character  of  a  strong 
nation  and  has  wider  bearing  on  national  life  than, 
perhaps,  we  are  aware  of. 

Mr.  Froude,  in  his  survey  of  early  England,  gives 
it  a  special  place,  and  I  venture  to  quote  his  words, 
for  they  carry  with  them,  not  only  their  own  lesson, 
but  the  authority  of  a  great  name  in  historical  re- 
search. "No  genius  can  dispense  with  experience. 
The  aberrations  of  power,  unguarded  or  ill  guided, 
are  ever  in  proportion  to  its  intensity,  and  life  is  not 
long  enough  to  recover  from  inevitable  mistakes. 
Noble  conceptions  already  existing,  and  a  nobler 
school  of  execution,  which  launch  mind  and  hand  at 
once  upon  their  true  courses,  are  indispensable  to 
transcendent  excellence  and  Shakespeare's  plays  were 
as  much  the  offspring  of  the  long  generations  which 


THE  STAGE  AND    THE  ACTOR  263 

had  pioneered  his  road  for  him,  as  the  discoveries  of 
Newton  were  the  offspring  of  those  of  Copernicus. 
No  great  general  ever  rose  out  of  a  nation  of  cowards; 
no  great  statesman  or  philosopher  out  of  a  nation  of 
fools;  no  great  artist  out  of  a  nation  of  materialists; 
no  great  drama,  except  when  the  drama  was  the  pos- 
session of  the  people.  Acting  was  the  special  amuse- 
ment of  the  English,  from  the  palace  to  the  village 
green,  it  was  the  result  and  the  expression  of  their 
strong  tranquil  possession,  of  their  lives,  of  their 
thorough  power  over  themselves  and  power  over 
circumstances.  They  were  troubled  with  no  sub- 
jective speculations;  no  social  problems  vexed  them, 
with  which  they  were  unable  to  deal  and  in  the  ex- 
uberance of  vigor  and  spirit  they  were  able  in  a  strict 
and  hteral  sense  of  the  word  to  play  with  the  materials 
of  life.'*     So  says  Mr.  Froude. 

In  the  face  of  this  statement  of  fact  set  forth 
gravely  in  its  place  in  the  history  of  a  nation,  what 
becomes  of  such  bold  assertions  as  sometimes  are 
made  regarding  the  place  of  the  drama  as  being  but  a 
poor  one,  since  the  efforts  of  the  actor  are  but  mimetic 
and  ephemeral,  and  they  pass  away  as  a  tale  that 
is  told.  All  art  is  mimetic  and  even  life  itself,  the 
highest  and  last  gift  of  God  to  His  people,  is  fleeting. 
Marble  crumbles  and  the  very  names  of  great  cities 
become  buried  in  the  dust  of  ages.  Who  then  would 
dare  to  arrogate  to  any  art  an  unchanging  place  from 
the  scheme  of  the  world's  development  or  would  con- 
demn it  because  its   efforts  fade  and   pass  ?     Nay, 


264  I'HE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

more;  has  even  the  tale  that  is  told,  no  significance 
in  after  years  ?  Can  such  not  stir,  when  it  is  worth 
the  telling,  the  hearts  of  men,  to  whom  it  comes  as  an 
echo  from  the  past  ?  Have  not  more  tales  remained 
vital  and  most  widely  known  which  are  told  and  told 
again,  face  to  face,  and  heart  to  heart,  when  the  teller 
and  the  listener  are  adding,  down  the  ages,  strength 
to  one  current  of  a  mighty  thought  or  a  mighty  deed, 
and  its  record  ? 

Surely,  the  record  that  lives  in  the  minds  of  men 
still  is  a  record,  though  it  be  not  graven  on  brass  or 
wrought  in  marble.  And  it  were  a  poor  conception 
of  the  value  of  any  art,  if,  in  considering  it,  we  were 
to  keep  our  eyes  fixed  on  some  dark  spot,  some  im- 
perfection, and  shut  our  eyes  to  its  aim,  its  power, 
its  beauty.  Poetry,  painting,  sculpture,  music,  archi- 
tecture; all  have  a  bearing  on  their  time  and  beyond 
it;  the  actor,  though  his  knowledge  may  be,  and  must 
be,  limited  by  the  knowledge  of  his  age,  so  long  as  he 
sounds  the  note  of  human  passion,  has  something 
which  is  common  to  all  the  ages,  and  if  he  can  smite 
water  from  the  rock  of  one  hardened  human  heart — 
if  he  can  bring  light  to  the  eye  or  wholesome  color  to 
the  faded  cheek — if  he  can  bring  or  restore  in  ever  so 
slight  a  degree  the  sunshine  of  hope,  of  pleasure,  of 
gaiety,  surely  he  cannot  have  worked  in  vain. 

That  the  theatre  is  primarily  a  place  of  amusement 
and  is  regarded  as  such  by  its  habitues,  is,  of  course, 
apparent;  but  this  is  not  its  limitation.  For  authors, 
managers  and  actors,  it  is  a  serious  employment  to 


THE  STAGE  AND   THE  ACTOR  265 

be  undertaken  gravely  and  of  necessity;  to  be  ad- 
hered to  rigidly.  The  practice  of  the  actor's  art 
may  be  considered  from  different  viewpoints,  but 
there  is  a  larger  view — that  of  the  state.  Here  we 
have  to  consider  a  custom  of  natural  growth,  specially 
suitable  to  the  genius  of  a  nation.  It  has  advanced 
with  the  progress  of  each  age  and  multiplied  with  its 
material  prosperity.  It  is  a  living  power  to  be  used 
for  good  or  for  great  evil,  and  farseeing  men  recognize 
it,  based  though  it  be  in  the  relaxation  and  pleasure 
of  the  people,  an  educational  medium  of  no  mean 
order. 

How  many  are  there  who  have  had  brought  home 
to  them,  in  an  understandable  manner,  by  stage  plays, 
the  costumes,  habits,  manners  and  customs  of  coun- 
tries and  ages  other  than  their  own;  what  insight  have 
they  thus  obtained  into  facts  and  vicissitudes  of  life, 
of  passions  and  sorrows  and  ambitions  outside  the 
narrow  scope  of  their  own  lives  and  which,  yet,  may 
and  do  mould  the  destinies  of  man.  All  this  is  edu- 
cation. Education  in  its  widest  sense — for  it  broad- 
ens the  sympathies  and  enlarges  the  intellectual  grasp 

To  hold  his  place  amongst  certain  progressing 
forces  the  actor  must  at  the  start  be  equipped  for  the 
work  before  him.  No  amount  of  training  can  give 
to  a  dense  understanding  powers  of  quickness  and 
spontaneity,  and  on  the  other  hand  no  genius  can 
find  its  fullest  expression  without  some  understand- 
ing of  the  principles  and  methods  of  a  craft.  It  is 
the  actor's  part  to  represent  or  interpret  the  ideas 


266  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

and  emotions  which  the  poet  has  created,  and  to  do 
this  he  must  at  the  first  have  a  full  knowledge  and 
understanding  of  them. 

For  the  consideration  of  the  art  of  acting,  it  must 
never  be  forgotten  that  its  ultimate  aim  is  beauty. 
Truth  itself  is  only  an  element  of  beauty  and  to  merely 
reproduce  things  vile  and  squalid  and  mean  is  a  de- 
basement of  art.  There  is  apt  to  be  such  a  tendency 
in  an  age  of  peace,  and  men  should  carefully  watch 
its  manifestations.  A  morose  and  hopeless  dis- 
satisfaction is  not  a  part  of  a  true  national  life.  This 
is  hopeful  and  earnest  and,  if  need  be,  militant.  It 
is  a  bad  sign  for  any  nation  to  yearn  for,  or  even 
to  tolerate,  pessimism  in  their  enjoyment  and  how 
can  pessimism  be  otherwise  than  antagonistic  to 
beauty  ? 

Life  with  all  its  pains  and  sorrows  is  a  beautiful 
and  precious  gift  and  the  actor's  art  is  to  reproduce 
this  beautiful  thing,  giving  due  emphasis  to  those 
virtues  and  those  stormy  passions  which  sway  the 
destinies  of  men.  Thus,  the  lessons  given  by  ex- 
perience, by  the  certain  punishment  of  ill  doing 
and  by  the  rewards  that  follow  upon  bravery,  for- 
bearance and  self-sacrificing  are,  in  the  mimic  stage, 
conveyed  to  men.  And  thus  every  actor  who  is  more 
than  a  mere  machine  and  who  has  an  ideal  of  any 
kind  has  a  duty  which  lies  beyond  the  scope  of  his 
personal  ambition.  His  art  must  be  to  him  some- 
thing to  hold  in  reverence,  if  he  wishes  others  to  hold 
it  in  esteem.     There  is  nothing  of  chance  about  his 


THE  STAGE  AND   THE  ACTOR  267 

work.  All,  actors  and  audience  alike,  must  bear  in 
mind  that  the  whole  scheme  of  the  higher  drama  is 
not  to  be  regarded  as  a  game  in  life  which  can  be 
played  with  varying  success.  The  present  intention 
may  be  to  interest  and  amuse,  but  its  deeper  purpose 
is  earnest,  intense  and  sincere. 

The  chief  glory  of  the  actor's  calling  has  been  Wil- 
liam Shakespeare — poet,  playwright  and  player. 
Shakespeare  recreated  the  English  stage  while  he 
was  founding  the  greatest  reputation  of  English 
literature.  He  was  an  actor  before  he  attempted 
the  writing  of  plays.  He  wrote  the  plays  for  the 
stage  alone.  His  chief  care  was  that  they  should  be 
acted,  not  published,  having  a  natural  objection  to 
his  plays  being  printed  as  long  as  the  acting  right 
was  vested  in  his  own  company,  for  there  was  no 
Dramatic  Authors'  Society  in  those  days  to  protect 
an  author's  rights.  One  of  the  most  remarkable 
characteristics  of  the  Shakespeare  plays  is  their  con- 
summate stage  craft.  If  Shakespeare  had  not  been  so 
familiar  with  the  art  of  the  stage  he  could  never  have 
written  such  acting  plays.  Shakespeare  knew  the 
stage  as  intimately  as  a  watchmaker  knows  the 
mechanism  of  a  watch.  He  wrote  for  the  theater  and 
succeeded  where  other  poets  have  failed  because  he 
understands  what  is  so  much  to  a  play,  the  art  of  con- 
struction— a  great  art  in  itself — which  Shakespeare,  as 
an  actor,  thoroughly  had  mastered.  Of  this  there  is  no 
doubt.  Many  of  the  great  dramatists  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan era  were  actors,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  were 


268  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

actors;  Ben  Jonson  was  an  actor.  Very  much  of 
Shakespeare's  life  is  unknown  to  us,  although  more  is 
known  of  Shakespeare  than  of  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries. We  sometimes  read  that  Shakespeare  des- 
pised the  stage  so  much  that  he  escaped  from  it  as 
soon  as  he  had  made  enough  money.  There  is  noth- 
ing to  warrant  such  a  statement. 

It  is  surely  unreasonable  to  assume  that  a  man 
must  loathe  an  occupation,  because  he  eventually 
retires  from  it  on  a  competence.  You  are  not  bound 
to  remain  in  harness  to  the  day  of  your  death.  But 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  Shakespeare  continued  to  be  an 
actor  long  after  he  became  a  man  of  substance. 
Halliwell-PhiUipps,  a  most  clear-sighted  student  of 
Shakespeare,  put  this  in  a  way  that  seems  convincing: 

By  the  spring  of  i6oi,at  the  latest,  if  not  precisely, 
Shakespeare  had  acquired  a  secure  and  definite  com- 
petence, independently  of  his  emoluments  as  a  dram- 
atist, and  yet  nine  years  afterward,  in  1610,  he  is 
discovered  playing  in  company  with  Burbage  and 
Heminge  at'  the  Blackfriars  Theatre.  When,  in  ad- 
dition to  this  voluntary  long  continuance  on  the 
boards  we  bear  in  mind  the  vivid  interest  in  the  stage 
and  in  the  purity  of  the  acted  drama,  which  is  ex- 
hibited in  the  well-known  dialogue  in  Hamlet,  and 
that  the  poet's  just  wishes  included  affectionate  recol- 
lections of  three  of  his  fellow  players,  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  he  could  have  nourished  a  real  antipathy 
to  his  lower  vocation.  It  is  on  the  contrary  to  be 
inferred  that  however  greatly  he  may  have  deplored 


THE  STAGE  AND   THE  ACTOR  269 

the  unfortunate  estimation  in  which  the  theater  was 
held  by  the  immense  majority  of  his  countrymen,  he 
himself  entertained  a  love  for  it  that  was  too  sincere  to 
be  repressed  by  contemporary  disdain.  If  there  is 
among  the  defective  records  of  the  poet's  life  one 
feature  demanding  special  respect,  it  is  the  unflinch- 
ing courage  with  which,  notwithstanding  his  desire 
for  social  position,  he  braved  public  opinion  in  favor 
of  a  continued  adherence  to  that  which  he  felt  was  in 
itself  a  noble  calling,  and  this  at  a  time  when  it  was 
not  merely  despised,  but  surrounded  by  an  aggressive 
fanaticism  that  prohibited  its  exercise  even  in  his  own 
native  town. 

Of  course,  we  are  confronted  by  the  well-known 
difficulty  in  the  iioth  sonnet,  which  is  supposed  to 
reveal  his  antipathy  to  the  actor's  calling. 

He  says : 

"Alas,  'tis  true  I  have  gone  here  and  there, 

And  made  myself  a  motley  to  the  view, 
Gor'd  mine  own  thoughts,  sold  cheap  what  is  most  dear, 

Made  old  offenses  of  affections  new; 
Most  true  it  is  that  I  have  look'd  on  truth 

Askance  and  strangely:  but,  by  all  above. 
These  blenches  gave  my  heart  another  youth. 

And  worse  essays  proved  thee  my  best  of  love." 

Yet,  the  sonnets  are  one  of  the  greatest  problems 
in  literature.  There  is  an  increasing  conflict  of 
authority  as  to  their  meaning  and  it  is  even  disputed 
that  the  particular  sonnet  has  any  personal  applica- 
tion to  the  poet  himself.  How  are  we  to  reconcile  his 
seeming   sense    of  degradation   with    Hamlet's    im- 


270  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

mortal  tribute  to  the  purpose  of  playing,  '*whose  end, 
both  at  the  first  and  now,  was  and  is,  to  hold,  as 
't  were,  the  mirror  up  to  Nature,  to  show  virtue  her 
own  feature,  scorn  her  own  image,  and  the  very  age 
and  body  of  the  time,  his  form  and  pressure."  No 
actor  with  such  an  ideal  as  that  before  him  can  truly 
feel  that  his  name  receives  a  brand  from  his  ambition. 

I  am  sure  I  need  not  apologize  for  these  excursions 
into  a  subject  that  so  closely  concerns  the  calling  to 
which  I  have  the  honor  to  belong.  It  will  not  do  to 
describe  Shakespeare  as  a  poet  by  the  grace  of  genius, 
and  an  actor  by  the  stress  of  lamentable  accident. 
If  Shakespeare  never  had  been  an  actor  we  should 
never  have  had  those  marvels  of  dramatic  literature. 
Shakespeare  used  the  stage  as  a  not  unworthy  instru- 
ment of  his  supreme  mind,  and,  whatever  the  imper- 
fections of  the  theatre,  it  holds  an  honorable  place 
amongst  the  agents  of  civilization. 

In  Germany  the  theatre  is  a  part  of  the  daily  life 
and  recreation  of  the  people,  and  is  largely  supported 
by  the  state.  I  doubt  not  that  by  and  by  every  great 
city  will  have  its  own  theatre  built  by  its  municipality, 
and  probably  the  first  of  such  English-speaking  thea- 
ters will  be  reared  here  in  America  in  your  own  great 
nation. 

Of  the  wisdom  of  state  subsidy  for  the  encourage- 
ment of  the  drama,  I  will  say  nothing — a  drama  in 
which  the  arts  of  poetry,  music  and  painting  blend 
with  the  knowledge  of  history  and  manners  and 
customs  of  all  people — a  drama  which  affords  to  the 


THE  STAGE  AND   THE  ACTOR  271 

most  exacting  intellect  a  delightful  recreation  if 
nothing  more — the  most  intellectual  recreation  the 
mind  of  man  has  yet  conceived. 


4fourtb  2)inner, 

Jfcbruarie  13,  1902. 

THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    RUSSIA. 

PROF.  ALEXANDER  S.   CHESSIN. 

Before  I  speak  of  the  civilization  of  Russia  we 
should  come  to  an  understanding  as  to  the  meaning 
of  the  term  civilization.  If  you  look  for  it  in  the 
dictionary  you  will  find  that  civilization  means  a  state 
of  being  reclaimed  from  the  rudeness  of  a  savage 
life.  You  will  then,  naturally,  look  in  the  dictionary 
for  the  definition  of  savage  life  and  you  will  discover 
that  it  is  a  state  of  not  being  civilized.  Let  me, 
therefore,  first  explain  what  I  understand  under  the 
term  civilization  or  culture. 

Culture,  as  the  sum-total  of  all  its  attributes,  em- 
braces four  distinct  groups  which  may  be  called  the 
elements  of  civilization,  namely,  the  religious,  the 
political  and  the  social-economic  elements,  and  cul- 
ture in  the  specific  sense  of  the  relation  of  man  to  the 
outward  world.  To  this  last  element  belong  the 
scientific,  aesthetic  and  technic  achievements  of  a 
nation. 

The  civilizations  of  Egypt,  China,  Chaldea,  India 
and  Persia,  which  may  be  called  aboriginal  inasmuch 
as  they  seem  to  have  sprung  up  independently  at 
different  points  of  the  earth,  cannot  be  said  to  have 


CIVILIZATION   OF   RUSSIA  273 

developed  any  one  of  the  four  elements  of  civilization 
to  a  high  degree  of  perfection.  In  those  aboriginal 
civilizations  religion,  politics,  social,  economy  and 
specific  culture  were  not  even  distinctly  defined  and 
separated.  Then  appeared  the  civilizations  with 
one  of  the  four  fundamental  elements  highly  de- 
veloped, each  civilization  being  characterized  by  the 
perfection  of  a  different  element.  Rehgion  was  the 
glory  of  the  Hebrews;  culture,  in  the  specific  sense, 
the  pride  of  Greece,  while  the  greatness  of  Rome  was 
due  to  the  political  genius  of  the  Roman  people.  The 
social-economic  element  had  not  yet  played  a  promi- 
nent part  in  any  civilization.  Universal  progress — 
which  does  not  mean  advancing  all  the  time  in  the 
same  direction,  but  extending  in  all  possible  directions, 
covering  the  whole  field  of  human  activity — de- 
manded either  that  in  subsequent  civilizations  the 
hitherto  neglected  social  economic  element  become 
the  most  essential  feature  of  progress,  or  that  the 
new  civilizations  be  more  complete,  more  varied  and 
characterized  by  the  high  development,  not  of  a 
single,  but  of  several  elements  at  once.  The  Romano- 
Germanic  type,  which  followed  in  the  wake  of  Rome, 
fulfilled  only  the  last  of  these  expectations.  The 
three  fundamental  elements  which  figured  so  prom- 
inently, but  singly,  in  the  civilizations  of  Palestine, 
Greece  and  Rome,  appeared  together  in  the  new  type 
and  all  three  attained  a  degree  of  perfection  of  which 
Europe  may  well  be  proud.  But  the  social-economic 
element  forms  the  darkest  side  of  the  Romano-Ger- 

18 


274  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

manic  type.  It  was  left  to  another  people  to  de- 
velop this  so-far  neglected  feature  of  civilization. 
The  social-economic  element  is  the  basis  of  the  Slavic 
type  of  culture. 

Slavic  culture,  however,  is  not  one-sided,  as  was 
that  of  Greece  or  Rome.  Religion  has  always  been 
an  essential  element  of  the  Slavic  type,  and  in  Russia 
it  is  so  deeply,  so  intimately  linked  with  national 
life,  that  it  forms  the  basis  of  patriotic  feeling.  The 
religious  world-conception  of  the  Slav  does  not  differ 
from  that  of  other  Christian  peoples,  but  the  Slavs 
are  an  eminently  more  religious  people  than  their 
Christian  brethren  in  Europe.  Compulsion  or  dom- 
inating influence  played  no  role  in  the  religious  evo- 
lution of  the  Slavs.  They  did  not  adopt  the  new 
religion  as  a  part  of  a  civilization  to  which  they  were 
forced  to  bow;  they  did  not  become  Christians  be- 
cause they  were  conquered  or  subjugated  by  a  Chris- 
tian people.  Even  the  influence  of  foreign  mission- 
aries was  never  exercised  over  the  people.  The 
nation  took  the  first  step  toward  adopting  the  new 
religion  without  an  impulse  from  outside.  Instinc- 
tively conscious  of  the  insufficiency  of  their  paganism 
and  craving  something  more  elevated,  they  invited 
apostles  from  all  the  churches  of  the  world  to  come 
and  teach  them  what  they  themselves  only  vaguely 
felt  but  did  not  know,  and  among  all  rehgious  they 
chose  the  one  which  they  considered  the  best  and 
highest,  and  to  this  religion  they  have  been  faithful 
ever  since. 


CIVILIZATION   OF   RUSSIA  275 

Politically  the  Slavs  are  not  credited  with  much 
sense  or  fitness,  chiefly  on  account  of  the  autocratic 
form  of  Russian  government.  Yet,  is  not  the  ex- 
istence of  that  mighty  world-power  in  itself  an  evi- 
dence to  the  contrary  ?  Russia  could  not  have 
emerged  from  the  many  and  serious  dangers  w  th 
which  was  threatened  her  very  existence,  without 
having  identified  herself  with  an  autocracy.  Cen- 
tralization was  not  only  the  natural  outcome  of  politi- 
cal evolution,  it  was  a  necessity;  moreover,  a  neces- 
sity fully  realized  by  the  people.  Far  from  being 
imposed  upon  them,  it  was  a  form  of  government 
which  they  desired  and  supported.  Respect  for 
authority  does  not  imply  lack  of  self-respect.  It  is 
the  privilege  of  the  free  to  know  how  to  obey.  The 
absence  in  Russia  of  political  freedom  enjoyed  by  the 
states  of  Western  Europe  is  not  in  itself  an  indication 
that  the  Russian  is  wanting  in  civic  virtue.  Euro- 
pean constitutionalism  would  be  exotic  on  Russian 
soil;  it  would  lack  national  foundations,  without 
which  it  can  bear  no  fruit. 

In  regard  to  scientific,  aesthetic  and  technic  achieve- 
ments, Russia  has  not  yet  attained  that  stage  of  de- 
velopment in  which  these  spheres  of  activity  become 
clearly  defined,  and  it  is  therefore  premature  to  ex- 
press a  positive  opinion  on  this  element  of  Slavic 
culture.  This  partial  immaturity,  despite  an  ex- 
istence of  over  one  thousand  years,  does  not  indicate 
cultural  inability  on  the  part  of  the  Slav.  The  mere 
duration  of  an  existence  is  not  what  decides  the  cul- 


276  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

tural  progress  of  a  nation.  The  determining  factor 
in  estimating  such  a  progress  is  the  stage  of  develop- 
ment, the  period  in  the  history  of  a  people.  History 
offers  not  a  single  example  of  a  people  among  whom 
art,  literature,  science  and  industry  flourished  before 
political  life  was  definitely  shaped,  and  while  it  is 
true  that  some  historic  peoples  successfully  con- 
tinued such  cultural  activity  even  after  having  lost 
political  independence,  in  no  case  has  a  nation  de- 
voted herself  to  promoting  purely  cultural  interests 
before  having  first  attained  such  independence. 
Building  up  the  state  on  secure  foundations  is  the 
first  act  of  a  historic  people  and  its  fulfillment  con- 
sumes an  amount  of  energy  proportional  to  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  problem.  Russia,  from  her  earliest  ex- 
istence, was  exposed  to  invasion  of  barbaric  hordes. 
She  received  all  the  blows  from  which  she  protected 
Europe  and  of  the  ten  centuries  of  her  existence  the 
greater  part  was  spent  in  struggles  with  the  Tartars 
in  the  east  and  south,  the  Swedes  in  the  north  and 
the  Lithuanians  and  Poles  in  the  west.  Not  until 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  the  political 
stability  of  Russia  firmly  established.  All  the  availa- 
ble energy  of  the  nation  was  consumed  to  achieve 
this  purpose.  Until  quite  recently  this  character  of 
national  activity  was  reflected  even  in  the  educational 
system  of  the  country  which  chiefly  aimed  to  pre- 
pare young  men  for  state  service.  This  intense  appli- 
cation to  a  political  purpose  left  little  opportunity 
for  the  development  of  purely  cultural  interests  and 


CIVILIZATION  OF   RUSSIA  277 

is  ample  historic  justification  for  the  comparatively 
low  state  of  Russian  culture. 

In  regard  to  the  fourth  and  last  fundamental  ele- 
ment of  civilization,  viz. :  the  social-economic,  Russia 
claims  more  particular  attention.  Russia  is  the  only 
large  state  that  can  boast  of  a  land-owning  popula- 
tion. In  Russia  there  is  no  contradiction  between 
political  and  economic  ideals;  no  unprovided  for  and, 
therefore,  dissatisfied  mass  of  proletarians  or  un- 
employed; no  labor  questions;  no  anticipation  of 
social-economic  conflicts,  as  in  Europe,  which  is 
threatened  by  military  despotism  and  social  revolu- 
tion, or  in  these  United  States,  where  the  despotism 
of  capital  is  wrangling  with  the  not  less  despotic  labor 
unions.  In  Russia  the  birth  of  every  peasant  child 
entitles  him  to  a  piece  of  land  and  a  portion  of  com- 
munal property. 

The  institution  to  which  Russia  owes  her  social 
economic  and  political  stability,  the  institution  to 
which  is  due  the  steady  and  rational  conservatism  of 
the  great  mass  of  the  people,  that  most  national  of 
all  institutions,  is  the  so-called  mir.  Such  being 
its  importance,  permit  me  to  tell  you,  in  as  few  words 
as  possible,  what  is  the  Russian  mir. 

The  mir  is  a  rural  commune  which  formerly  was 
based  on  land  tenure  alone.  Emancipation  has 
somewhat  modified  its  original  character  by  adding  to 
it  a  new  feature,  namely,  the  joint  payment  of  com- 
munal taxes  and  redemption  dues.  In  explanation 
of  the  last  term  I  may  tell  you  that  the  emancipated 


278  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

peasant,  in  receiving  from  the  landlord  and  former 
master  a  piece  of  land,  remunerated  him  for  the  loss. 
The  money  for  this  remuneration  was  advanced  to 
the  peasants  by  the  government  and  was  to  be  paid 
back  into  the  imperial  treasury  in  annual  installments 
in  the  course  of  forty-nine  years,  at  six  per  cent,  in- 
terest. These  annual  installments  constitute  the 
above-mentioned  redemption  dues.  Thus  you  see 
that  the  peasants  are  still  debtors  to  the  state  and 
will  remain  so  for  eight  more  years,  at  the  end  of 
which  time  the  total  amount  of  redemption  dues  will 
be  paid  in  and  an  era  of  greater  prosperity  will  come 
upon  a  population  which  is  to-day  overburdened  with 
the  simultaneous  payment  of  these  dues  and  of  state, 
province  and  village  taxes. 

Returning  to  the  wz/r,  sometimes  it  is  a  single  village. 
In  this  case  the  economic  administration  adapts 
itself  exactly  to  the  civil.  Or,  it  may  happen  that  a 
large  village  is  divided  into  several  rural  communes. 
Then  each  commune  has  its  economic  administration, 
while  the  civil  and  political  administration  is  com- 
mon to  all.  Again,  a  number  of  villages  may  form 
a  single  mir.  Thus  the  size  of  the  mir  may  vary 
from  twenty  or  thirty  to  several  thousands  of  fam- 
ilies. The  members  of  the  mir  are  linked  together 
by  the  collective  ownership  of  land  and  property,  and 
since  emancipation,  as  I  have  said,  also  by  the  joint 
responsibility  to  the  imperial  government  for  the  pay- 
ment of  redemption  dues  and  of  ordinary  taxes.  Both 
the  enjoyment  of  collective  property  and  the  respon- 


CIVILIZATION   OF  RUSSIA  279 

sibility  for  common  dues  and  taxes  to  the  state,  are 
distributed  among  the  members  of  the  village  com- 
mune by  the  mir  as  it  thinks  fit.  Not  individual 
peasants,  but  the  mir  being  responsible  to  the  im- 
perial government  for  the  payment  of  dues  and 
taxes,  the  government  does  not  concern  itself  with 
their  distribution  among  the  members  of  the  com- 
mune. This  distribution  of  property  and  of  taxes 
forms  naturally  the  chief  interest  of  the  mir.  Now, 
although  the  mir  is  based  on  the  principle  of  equality, 
nevertheless,  in  the  allotment  of  land  and  of  other 
properties,  and  in  the  distribution  of  taxes,  the  mir 
does  not  follow  this  principle  to  the  letter.  In  as- 
signing a  share  to  a  family  the  mir  not  only  takes  into 
account  the  number  of  its  members  but  also  their 
ages,  health  and  means.  It  estimates  the  working 
capacity  of  every  family  and  distributes  the  shares 
accordingly.  Moreover,  a  fair  distribution  to-day 
will  not  be  so  five  or  six  years  hence,  because  in  some 
families  the  number  of  members  will  have  increased, 
while  in  others  again  it  will  have  diminished.  A  new 
distribution  therefore  will  be  necessary  to  make  the 
shares  equal  and  just,  the  productive  capacity  of 
each  family  being  again  taken  as  the  principle  of  dis- 
tribution. For  a  long  time  this  equalization  can  be 
brought  about  by  partial  exchange  and  transfer  of 
shares  without  upsetting  the  whole  commune  by  a 
general  redistribution.  The  system  of  allotment 
adopted  depends  entirely  on  the  will  of  the  par- 
ticular   commune.     In    every    case,    however,    each 


280  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

family  owns  a  homestead  which  is  its  hereditary  pos- 
session and  is  not  affected  by  the  periodical  redis- 
tribution of  land. 

The  imperial  government  never  interferes  in  the 
internal  affairs  of  the  commune.  In  this  regard  the 
mir  is  a  self-governing  institution.  The  peasants 
have  their  own  tribunals  and  laws,  which  differ  in 
more  than  one  respect  from  the  imperial  code. 
Equality  of  rights  is  coupled  with  complete  social 
equality.  Thus  the  self-government  of  the  peasants 
is  based  on  purely  democratic  principles,  by  virtue  of 
which  every  member  personally  participates  in  all 
concerns  of  the  community  and  has  an  equal  share 
in  its  affairs.  Each  village  has  a  starosta,  or  elder,  a 
sort  of  mayor,  who  is  elected  by  the  mir.  The  starosta 
represents  only  the  executive  power.  The  authority 
resides  in  the  assembly  which  is  formed  of  all  the 
heads  of  families.  Sometimes  these  are  women, 
because  a  wife  may,  by  the  death  of  her  husband, 
become  the  head  of  the  family  and  as  such  she  has  the 
right    to    vote    in    the    assembly. 

Among  Russian  proverbs  there  are  some  which 
do  not  speak  in  terms  of  high  respect  of  female  in- 
telligence, as,  for  example,  the  saying  that  a  woman's 
hair  is  long  but  wits  are  short;  or,  another,  accord- 
ing to  which  woman  has  no  soul  but  only  vapor. 
Yet  such  is  the  spirit  of  fairness  and  of  absolute 
equality  among  the  peasants  that  in  the  Russian  mir 
women  enjoy  more  rights  than  are  granted  them  by 
any  European  code  of  laws.      Thus,  it  may  come  to 


CIVILIZATION   OF  RUSSIA  281 

pass  that  a  woman  becomes  the  starosta  or  the  mayor 
of  a  village. 

The  absence  of  all  formal  procedure  in  the  assem- 
bhes  admirably  illustrates  the  essentially  practical 
character  of  the  mir.  An  open  space  where  there  is 
sufficient  room  may  serve  as  a  forum.  The  discus- 
sions are  occasionally  very  animated,  but  there  is 
rarely  any  attempt  at  speech-making.  If  disputes 
arise,  in  no  case  is  there  any  danger  of  the  disputants 
coming  to  blows,  as  seems  to  be  customary  in  the 
civilized  parliaments  of  civilized  Europe.  "No  class 
of  men  in  the  world,'*  says  Mackenzie-Wallace,  "is 
more  good-natured  and  pacific  than  the  Russian 
peasantry.  When  sober  they  never  fight  and  even 
when  under  the  influence  of  alcohol  they  are  more 
likely  to  be  violently  affectionate  than  disagreeably 
quarrelsome.'* 

Communal  measures  are  generally  carried  by 
acclamation  and  should  there  be  a  diversity  of  opinion 
the  minority  submits  without  grumbling.  The 
peasants  are  accustomed  to  work  together  in  this 
way  and  to  make  concessions  for  the  communal  wel- 
fare and  they  bow  unreservedly  to  the  will  of  the  mir. 
Therefore  disagreements  are  extremely  rare  despite 
the  fact  that  no  measure  can  be  taken  by  the  com- 
munity without  the  unanimous  approbation  of  all 
the  members. 

It  is  generally  admitted  that  the  Proletariat  in 
Europe  and  in  countries  which  have  adopted  Euro- 
pean civilization  is  due  chiefly  to  the  expropriation 


282  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

of  the  peasantry  or  small  land-owners,  Japan  being 
the  most  recent  example  of  this  procedure. 

The  communal  system  of  Russia  which  secures  for 
the  peasants  the  possession  of  land  effectually  pre- 
vents the  formation  of  a  Proletariat.  The  land  re- 
served for  the  peasantry  cannot  be  encroached  upon 
by  the  large  land-owners  or  capitalists,  and,  as  I  have 
said,  every  peasant,  by  the  simple  fact  of  his  birth,  ac- 
quires almost  an  inalienable  right  to  a  share  of  this 
land.  Thus  the  Slavs  are  the  first  historic  people 
who  may  fairly  claim  that  they  are  on  the  road  to  a 
successful  solution  of  the  intricate  social-economic 
problem. 

Now,  while  in  Russia  the  communal  system  and 
the  endowment  of  peasants  with  land  have  developed 
a  strongly  conservative  spirit  in  the  great  mass  of  the 
people  and  have  saved  Russia  from  social-economic 
difficulties,  in  Western  Europe,  on  the  contrary,  the 
conditions  created  by  feudalism  were  favorable  to  the 
growth  of  revolutionary  ideas  and  social-economic 
conflicts.  The  political  writers  and  philosophers  of 
the  eighteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
centuries,  who  so  fearlessly  attacked  social  iniquities 
in  the  face  of  a  mighty  feudal  hierarchy,  a  militant 
church  and  a  despotic  royal  power,  no  doubt  suc- 
ceeded in  stripping  the  throne  and  the  altar  of  their 
prestige,  but  they  were  far  from  realizing  the  idea  of 
justice  and  equality  in  the  name  of  which  they  raised 
their  cries.  Their  brave  struggle,  after  all,  benefited 
but  a  small  minority  of  society,  namely  the  educated 


CIVILIZATION   OF   RUSSIA  283 

and  well-to-do  bourgeoisie  or  middle  class,  while  the 
great  mass  of  the  people  remained  in  a  state  of  wretch- 
edness little  better  than  in  the  old  regime.  Hence 
the  Jacobinism  of  the  intelligent  fraction  of  society. 
Seeing  that  the  claim  of  the  people  amounted  to 
nothing  because  it  did  not  involve  the  agrarian  ques- 
tion, realizing  at  last  that  by  purely  political  or  relig- 
ious revolutions  the  ultimate  goal  of  ownership, 
equaUty  and  freedom  cannot  be  reached,  the  sup- 
porters and  champions  of  the  people  raised  the  cry 
of  economic  quality  and  strove  to  achieve  a  complete 
social  revolution  in  the  sense  of  communal  autonomy. 
The  earlier  philosophers, — Fourier,  Saint-Simon, 
Robert  Owen, — based  their  ideas  of  a  perfect  social 
organization  on  some  abstract  principle  derived  from 
human  nature.  The  Utopian  character  and  weak- 
ness of  these  doctrines  being  attributed  by  German 
philosophers  to  the  human-nature  point  of  view, 
Hegel  and  the  large  school  of  his  disciples  and  followers 
sought  the  cause  of  social  evolution  outside  man's 
nature.  Hegel  conceived  history  as  a  process  sub- 
ject to  law  and  thought  he  found  the  solution  of  the 
problem  in  what  he  called  the  Weltgeist,  an  absolute 
idea,  which  is  as  great  an  abstraction  as  the  principles 
on  which  Saint-Simon,  Fourier  and  Robert  Owen 
based  their  philosophic  speculations.  Finally  ap- 
peared the  school  of  the  so-called  scientific  socialism, 
which  claims  to  rest  on  a  real  foundation,  namely,  on 
the  immanent  laws  of  economic  evolution.  This 
modern  and  latest  form  of  socialism  is  the  creation  of 


s5i^V'=^ 


284  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Karl  Marx  and  forms  the  basis  of  the  socialist  theories 
of  to-day. 

The  views  of  Karl  Marx  were  publicly  proclaimed 
in  the  manifesto  of  the  Communist  League  at  their 
general  congress  in  London  in  1847.  It  was  the  first 
clearly  formulated  exposition  of  the  designs  of  the 
socialists.  Among  the  measures  demanded  were  ex- 
propriation of  landed  property  and  employment  of 
rents  for  state  purposes;  abolition  of  inheritance  and 
centralization  of  all  credit  by  the  formation  of  a 
national  bank,  with  state  capital  and  exclusive  monop- 
oly; appropriation  by  the  state  of  all  means  of  trans- 
port, such  as  railways,  canals,  steamships,  roads  and 
so  on;  establishment  of  national  workshops;  institu- 
tion at  pubHc  expense  of  great  industrial  armies. 
State  guarantee  of  an  existence  to  all  workmen  was 
also  demanded  and  labor  was  made  a  compulsory  ob- 
ligation upon  all  equally.  The  manifesto  declared 
that  the  purpose  of  the  League  could  only  be  accom- 
plished by  a  violent  overthrow  of  all  existing  arrange- 
ments of  society  and  concluded  with  these  words: 
"Let  the  ruling  classes  tremble  at  a  communist 
revolution.  The  Proletariat  has  nothing  to  lose  in  it 
but  its  chains.  It  has  a  world  to  win.  Proletarians 
of  all  countries,  unite!" 

But  the  year  which  saw  the  birth  of  the  socialism 
of  Karl  Marx  saw  also  the  beginning  of  the  schism  in 
the  revolutionary  body  which  separated  it  into  two 
radically  opposed  camps  that  were  never  to  meet 
again  except  in  the  most  violent  collision;  for  in  the 


CIVILIZATION   OF  RUSSIA  285 

same  year  Proudhon  definitely  formulated  the 
doctrine  to  which  he  himself  gave  the  name  of 
anarchism. 

Of  course,  anarchism  was  not  born  in  a  day.  No 
doctrine  ever  is.  Proudhon  also  had  precursors. 
But  the  importance  of  a  doctrine  is  measured  not  so 
much  by  what  it  proclaims  as  by  the  influence  which 
it  exercises  on  human  progress,  and  the  spread  of 
anarchist  ideas  was  due  primarily  to  the  influence  of 
Proudhon.  With  him  began  the  parting  of  the  ways 
between  anarchism  and  authoritative  socialism.  He 
is  therefore  rightly  called  the  father  of  modern  anarch- 
ism even  though,  almost  in  the  same  year  and  inde- 
dendently  of  him,  anarchist  doctrines  were  pro- 
pounded by  Max  Stirner  in  Germany  and  Josiah 
Warren  in  the  United  States.  This  contemporaneous 
appearance  is  worthy  of  note,  as  it  shows  the  symp- 
tomatic character  of  the  movement.  "As  far  as 
priority  of  time  is  concerned,"  says  Benjamin  R. 
Tucker,  editor  of  Liberty,  and  leader  of  the  Boston 
school  of  anarchism,  "  the  credit  seems  to  belong  to 
Warren,  a  fact  which  should  be  remembered  by  the 
stump  orators  who  are  so  fond  of  declaiming  against 
anarchism  as  an  imported  article.  Of  the  purest 
Revolutionary  blood,  too,  this  Warren,  for  he  descends 
from  the  Warren  who  fell  at  Bunker  Hill."  This 
claim  to  a  doubtful  honor  is,  however,  readily  dis- 
posed of  if  it  be  considered  how  little  influence  the 
school  of  Warren  has  exercised  in  this  country.  In 
fact,  I  should  not  in  the  least  be  surprised  if  to  a  great 


286  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

many  of  you  its  very  existence  has  been  revealed  for 
the  first  time  to-night. 

The  schism  which  v^as  growing  in  the  socialist 
camp  came  to  light  during  the  discussions  of  the 
famous  International  Workingmen's  Association, 
founded  by  Karl  Marx  in  1864,  after  the  dissolution  of 
the  Communist  League.  The  International,  like  the 
Communist  League  which  it  replaced,  aimed  at  the 
systematic  promotion  of  associated  labor  by  state 
means.  It  was  based  on  practically  the  same  princi- 
ples as  those  proclaimed  in  the  programme  of  the 
League.  Indeed,  Marx  began  his  inaugural  address 
to  the  International  with  the  very  words  which  con- 
cluded the  communist  manifesto  of  1874  and  which 
have  since  become  the  motto  of  the  party:  "Prole- 
tarians of  all  countries,  unite!"  At  the  first  congress 
held  by  the  International  after  the  outbreak  of  the 
Franco-Prussian  War  and  the  Revolution  of  the 
Paris  Commune  in  1872,  at  the  Hague,  violent  dis- 
sentions  arose  on  the  question  as  to  the  government 
of  the  society  of  the  future.  One  party,  guided  by 
Marx  maintained  that  without  a  centralized  and 
supreme  political  authority  the  sociaHst  programme 
could  not  be  realized;  the  other,  headed  by  Mikhail 
Bakunin,  a  Russian  and  an  ardent  disciple  and  fol- 
fower  of  Proudhon,  declared  that  the  Marxists  would 
simply  produce  the  old  tyrannical  regime  in  a  possibly 
more  intolerable  form  and  that  society  should  be 
reconstructed  on  purely  anarchistic  lines,  that  is, 
without  government  or  authority  of  any  kind. 


CIVILIZATION   OF  RUSSIA  287 

Thus  did  anarchism,  from  a  theory,  spring  into 
active  existence  as  a  violent  reaction  against  the 
tyrannical  rule  of  authoritative  socialism.  Anarchism, 
therefore,  is  the  antithesis  of  socialism.  It  is  a  tend- 
ency tov^rard  a  state  of  society  in  which  the  rule  of 
each  individual  by  himself  is  the  only  government 
the  legitimacy  of  which  is  recognized,  while  modern 
sociahsm  aims  to  centralize  all  authority  and  put  all 
activity  and  production  in  the  hands  of  a  supreme 
authority  vested  in  the  state. 

The  natural  outcome  of  the  schism  in  the  socialist 
body  was  that  the  International,  after  languishing 
a  year  or  so,  ceased  to  exist.  But  its  fall  did  not 
check  the  growth  of  socialism.  The  congress  held  in 
Gotha  in  1875  had  especial  significance  in  drawing 
together  the  divergent  sections  of  German  socialism, 
and  its  comprehensive  programme  may  be  regarded 
as  the  fullest  and  most  authentic  expression  of  the 
views  of  the  whole  body  of  European  socialists.  After 
stating  that  all  wealth  and  all  civilization  spring  from 
labor  and  that  the  whole  fruit  of  labor  belongs  to 
society,  it  announced  for  its  purpose  the  establish- 
ment by  all  lawful  means — of  a  free  state  in  a  socialist 
society.  It  disclaimed  the  "iron  law  of  wages"  and 
set  itself  the  task  of  putting  an  end  to  exploitation  in 
all  its  forms  and  doing  away  with  all  political  and 
social  inequality.  But  the  question  as  to  the  means 
and  methods  of  attaining  this  object  brought  a  new 
element  of  dissention  into  the  socialist  body  and  the 
strife  reached  a  climax  immediately  upon  the  passing 


288  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

of  the  Stringent  anti-socialist  legislation  in  Germany 
in  1878.  The  moderate  faction,  led  by  Bebel  and 
Liebknecht,  advocated  a  parliamentary  course  of 
action,  while  the  extreme  element,  headed  by  Kassel- 
man  and  Most — the  notorious  editor  of  "Freiheit," — 
would  be  content  with  nothing  short  of  a  policy  of 
general  destruction,  advocating  all  forms  of  armed 
insurrection  and  stopping  at  neither  dynamite  nor 
assassination.  The  question  was  brought  before  the 
socialist  congress  at  Wyden  in  Switzerland  in  1880, 
with  the  result  that  Johann  Most  and  Hasselman  were 
expelled  from  the  party  and  full  confidence  was  ex- 
pressed in  the  parliamentary  leaders.  At  the  same 
time  the  congress  revised  the  programme  of  Gotha 
and  effaced  the  word  lazuful  from  the  paragraph  de- 
scribing the  means  by  which  the  socialist  party  pur- 
posed to  reach  its  aims.  The  new  programme  clearly 
showed  that  the  difference  between  the  moderate  and 
the  extreme  sections  was  only  one  of  expediency 
and  not  of  principle.  The  victory  of  the  padiamen- 
tary  leaders,  however,  determined  the  character  of 
the  subsequent  development  of  socialism  and  al- 
though the  congress  at  Halle  in  1891  refused  to  restore 
the  word  lawful  in  the  above-mentioned  clause  in 
the  programme  of  Wyden,  the  steady  growth  of  par- 
liamentary methods  and  the  gradual  conversion  of 
the  socialist  body  into  definite  political  parties,  to- 
gether with  a  noticeable  moderation  in  tone,  may  be 
said  to  form  the  characteristic  features  of  the  most 
recent  evolution  of  socialism. 


CIVILIZATION   OF  RUSSIA  289 

The  evolution  of  anarchism,  unfortunately,  pro- 
ceeded in  a  very  different  way.  We  have  seen  how  it 
sprung  into  active  life  as  a  reactionary  movement, 
in  violent  opposition  to  the  doctrine  of  authoritative 
socialism.  At  first  it  developed  purely  on  lines  laid 
out  by  Proudhon,  and  this  early  period  of  modern 
anarchism,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  insignificant 
revolutionary  attempts,  is  free  from  the  outrages  with 
which  the  name  of  anarchism  is  identified  to-day. 
Indeed,  the  fundamental  ideas  of  anarchism  have  no 
necessary  internal  connection  with  the  so-called 
"propaganda  of  deed."  Writing  to  Marx  in  1864, 
Proudhon  warned  him  against  resorting  to  revolu- 
tionary action  of  any  kind,  as  a  means  of  promoting 
social  reform.  "That  pretended  means,"  he  says, 
"is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  an  appeal  to  force,  to 
arbitrary  power  and  is  therefore  a  contradiction." 
Even  in  our  days  Elisee  Reclus,  the  famous  geographer 
and  anarchist  leader,  delivered  himself  of  the  follow- 
ing remarkable  utterance:  "Anarchism  is,  above 
everything  else,  a  humanitarian  doctrine.  It  is  the 
primary  duty  of  whoever  calls  himself  an  anarchist  to 
be  kind  and  forbearing.  If  those  who  are  responsible 
for  the  barbarous  deeds  imagine  that  by  committing 
them  they  are  doing  a  service  to  the  anarchist  cause, 
they  are  terribly  deceived.  The  anarchist  ideal  is 
grand  and  noble;  it  must  not  be  desecrated.  Those 
among  us  who  are  guilty  of  dishonorable  action,  dis- 
honor the  doctrine.  Unfortunately,  there  are  many 
such  in  our  ranks." 

19 


290  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Aside  from  the  criminal  propaganda  of  deed — 
which  is  an  element  foreign  to  anarchism  and,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  only  a  manifestation  of  a  revolutionary 
spirit,  irrespective  of  any  doctrine, — at  bottom,  all 
\  anarchist  theories  are  harmless,  because  they  are 
self-contradictory  and  utterly  Utopian  in  character. 
Somebody  has  wittily  said  that  the  profession  of  faith 
of  the  anarchists  may  be  summed  up  in  two  articles 
of  an  impossible  law.  First,  there  shall  be  nothing; 
^  second,  no  one  is  charged  with  carrying  out  the  above 
article.  It  would  be  more  correct  to  substitute  for 
this  aphorism  another  by  a  not  less  witty  writer. 
.  ** Article  one,  there  shall  be  everything;  and,  Article  two, 
no  one  is  held  responsible  for  seeing  that  there  is 
anything  at  all."  Anarchists  are  right  when  they  say 
that  government  implies  compulsion;  that  any  form 
of  restriction  imposed  upon  individual  liberty  is  an 
indication  of  an  imperfect  state  of  society.  The 
doctrine  of  "order  through  anarchy"  undoubtedly 
conceives  the  highest  form  of  perfect  social  organiza- 
tion. But  these  incorrigible  Utopians  fail  to  recog- 
nize the  fact  that  even  though  government  can  be 
defended  only  on  the  ground  of  expediency  and  not  of 
ethical  principle,  we  cannot  dispense  with  it  as  long 
as  there  remains  one  atom  of  human  imperfection 
in  this  world. 

The  idea  of  violence  is  logically  and  naturally  in- 
compatible with  the  conception  of  "order  through 
anarchy,"  and,  in  fact,  violence  and  revolutionary 
methods  have  been  adopted  only  by  a  small  fraction 


CIVILIZATION  OF  RUSSIA  291 

of  the  anarchists.  Europe  would  like  nothing  better 
than  to  throw  the  odium  of  anarchist  crimes  on  her 
traditional  antagonist,  Russia.  She  claims  that  the 
propaganda  of  deed  is  merely  a  piece  of  tactics  bor- 
rowed from  the  Russian  nihilists  and  that  Mikhail 
Bakunin,  who  played  so  conspicuous  a  part  in  the 
disruption  of  the  International,  is  the  true  apostle 
of  the  anarchism  of  action.  This  is  a  more  or  less 
intentional  distortion  of  history.  The  anarchism  of 
violence  owed  its  birth  to  circumstances  in  which 
Bakunin  had  no  share  It  is  true  that  the  Alliance 
founded  by  him  in  Geneva  in  opposition  to  the  In- 
ternational in  1868  may  be  considered  as  the  first 
society  with  avowedly  anarchist  tendencies,  but  it  is 
beyond  a  doubt  quite  as  true  that  the  struggle  be- 
tween the  Bakuninsts  and  the  Marxists  ended  in  a 
crushing  defeat  of  the  anarchists.  The  influence  of 
Bakunin,  which  has  been  greatly  over-rated,  was  fast 
dying  out  toward  the  end  of  the  seventies  and  every- 
where, except  possibly  in  France,  anarchism  was  on  a 
downward  path,  seemingly,  with  no  hope  of  raising 
its  head  again.  What,  then,  caused  the  sudden  out- 
burst of  activity  in  a  body  that  was  to  all  appearances 
practically  dead  ?  Gentlemen,  it  was  the  German 
anti-socialist  legislation  of  1878.  This  legislation 
raised  a  storm  in  the  revolutionary  elements  of  Ger- 
many and  from  that  country  it  spread  Hke  wildfire 
over  the  entire  continent  of  Europe.  The  repressive 
measures  left  to  the  socialists  no  means  of  constitu- 
tional agitation  and  the  extreme  section  among  them, 


292  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

led  by  Most  and  Hasselman,  merely  seized  upon  this 
opportunity  to  give  vent  to  their  revolutionary  in- 
stinct. Johann  Most  drew  up  a  comprehensive  guide 
for  the  propagandists  of  action,  in  which  the  use  of 
poison,  the  dagger  and  the  revolver  was  discussed 
in  the  minutest  details  and  directions  were  given  for 
the  laying  of  bombs  and  explosives  in  palaces,  churches 
and  places  of  public  gathering.  This  programme 
of  class  war,  murder  and  incendiarism  strongly  ap- 
pealed to  the  representatives  of  "darkest  Europe," 
not  because  they  beheved  in  the  anarchism  of  Johann 
Most — ^what  does  the  rabble  care  for  theories  or  doc- 
trines ? — but  because  to  them  it  meant  their  own 
dictatorship,  their  own  arbitrary  rule.  Only  the 
lowest  strata  of  the  anarchists  adopted  this  policy  of 
violence  and  assassination.  One  portion  of  Most's  pro- 
gramme, however,  appealed  to  all  the  anarchists  and 
had  a  far-reaching  influence  on  the  development  of  the 
entire  movement.  I  have  reference  to  the  idea  of  the 
group  which  was  universally  adopted  and  forms  the 
most  characteristic  feature  of  the  anarchist  organi- 
zation to-day,  if  one  can  speak  of  such  a  thing  as  an 
organization  at  all,  seeing  that  these  groups  of  three 
or  four  men  are  completely  autonomous. 

The  immediate  consequence  of  Most  and  Hassel- 
man's  agitation  was,  as  we  have  seen,  the  formal 
expulsion  of  the  violent  section  from  the  socialist 
party.  But  the  revolutionary  sentiment  created  by 
the  German  anti-socialist  legislation  could  not  be 
checked  by  the  action  of  the  Congress  at  Wyden. 


CIVILIZATION  OF  RUSSIA  293 

Most*s  following  grew  from  day  to  day.  His  pro- 
gramme of  violence  attracted  not  only  the  disaffected 
members  of  the  socialist  body,  but  also  a  large  con- 
tingent from  the  criminal  arid  the  morbid  elements  of 
society.  "Criminals/*  says  Lombroso,  "usually  take 
a  large  share  in  the  initial  stages  of  insurrections  and 
revolutions,  for  at  a  time  when  the  weak  and  im- 
pulsive are  still  hesitating,  the  impulsive  force  of  ab- 
normal and  unhealthy  natures  preponderates  and 
their  example  calls  forth  epidemics  of  excesses." 

Thus  did  the  anarchism  of  Proudhon  and  Bakunin, 
after  receiving  a  crushing  blow  at  the  hands  of  au- 
thoritative socialism,  suddenly  spring  into  life  again, 
but  stained  by  the  infamous  baptism  of  violence  re- 
ceived from  Johann  Most.  Revolution,  instead  of 
being  a  means  to  an  end,  became  an  end  in  itself.  The 
fatal  programme  of  the  London  congress  in  July, 
1881,  opened  with  the  announcement  that  "the 
revolutionaries  of  all  countries  are  uniting  into  an 
International  Socialist  Revolutionary  Workingmen's 
Association  for  the  purpose  of  a  social  revolution.'* 
Headquarters  were  established  in  London  and  sub- 
committees formed  in  Paris,  Geneva  and  New  York. 
The  programme  demanded  the  annihilation  of  all 
rulers,  state  officials,  nobility,  clergy,  capitalists  and 
property-holders,  by  any  and  every  means.  The 
committees  were  to  hold  regular  communications 
with  one  another,  collect  money  for  the  purchase 
of  poisons  and  weapons  and  designate  places  suitable 
for  the  laying  of  mines,  and  so  on.     Besides  the  cen- 


294  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

tral  committee  in  London  an  international  executive 
committee  and  information  bureau  was  established 
whose  duty  it  was  to  carry  out  the  decisions  of  the 
central  committee.  How  successfully  their  infamous 
programme  was  adhered  to  in  the  decade  following 
the  year  of  the  London  congress  has  unfortunately 
been  only  too  clearly  demonstrated  by  the  numerous 
outrages  in  all  parts  of  Europe.  Everywhere  anarch- 
ism was  revived  in  its  new  revolutionary  form. 
Joseph  Penkert  in  Austria-Hungary,  Cafiero  and 
Malatesta  in  Italy,  but  especially  Peter  Kropotkin, 
in  the  south  of  France,  cleverly  taking  advantage  of 
the  discords  prevailing  among  the  socialists,  infused 
new  life  in  the  dying  anarchist  body  by  fanning  the 
revolutionary  spirit  into  a  flame. 

Among  present-day  anarchists  no  one's  influence  is 
greater  than  that  of  Peter  Kropotkin.  He  is  the 
apostle  of  the  so-called  communist  anarchism  which 
has  replaced  the  collectivist  anarchism  of  Proudhon. 
Kropotkin's  motto  is  Everything  belongs  to  all.'* 
"Heap  together  all  the  means  of  life,"  he  cries,  "and 
let  them  be  divided  according  to  each  man's  need." 
At  the  congress  in  Geneva  in  1882  the  followers  of 
Kropotkin  formally  separated  from  every  other 
social  revolutionary  party.  They  must  be  especially 
distinguished  from  the  so-called  individualist  anarchist 
who  repudiates  the  dogma  of  violence.  The  manifesto 
of  the  Geneva  Congress  ran  something  as  follows: 
*'Our  ruler  is  our  enemy.  Our  enemies  are  the 
property-holder  and  the  manufacturer.     Our  enemy 


CIVILIZATION  OF  RUSSIA  295 

is  the  state,  whether  monarchical,  oligarchical  or 
democratic.  Our  enemy  is  every  thought  of  author- 
ity, whether  men  call  it  God  or  devil.  Our  enemy  is 
the  law,  which  means  oppression  of  the  weak  by  the 
strong.  We  work  for  the  annihilation  of  all  legal 
institutions  and  are  in  accord  with  everyone  who 
defies  the  law  by  a  revolutionary  act."  At  this 
congress,  moreover,  the  collectivism  of  Proudhon 
and  Bakunin  was  formally  abandoned  and  a  declara- 
tion was  made  in  favor  of  communism  on  the  lines 
laid  out  by  Kropotkin. 

With  Most's  departure  for  America  the  Association 
founded  by  him  at  the  London  congress  seems  to  have 
dwindled  away.  At  any  rate,  the  latest  evolution  of 
anarchism  is  marked  by  the  complete  absence  of  any 
central  organization.  To-day  everything  rests  with 
the  group,  that  is  a  voluntary  association  of  rarely 
more  than  five  men,  united  by  personal  bonds,  sim- 
ilarity of  occupation,  close  neighborhood  or  some 
such  cause.  These  groups  dissolve  as  readily  as  they 
are  formed;  but,  although  of  the  most  varied  and 
fluctuating  character,  they  have  one  essential  feature 
in  common,  namely,  the  complete  individuality  of 
each    member. 

Indeed,  the  anarchist  outrages  of  recent  date 
have  arisen  almost  exclusively  from  the  initiative  of 
individuals.  This  utter  lack  of  organization,  while 
rendering  it  difficult  for  the  government  of  any  country 
todealwithanarchists,  isat  thesame  time  a  source  of 
undeniable    weakness.       Anarchists     may     commit 


296  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

isolated  crimes,  but  they  have  not  the  power  of 
bringing  about  a  social  revolution. 

Such,  then,  is  the  state  of  affairs  to  which  Europe 
was  led  by  a  feudal  civilization.  The  vain  illusion  of 
abstract  rights  temptingly  pictured  in  the  great  re- 
publican device  of  "Liberty,  Equality  and  Fra- 
ternity" only  served  to  kindle  in  the  hearts  of  the 
oppressed  mass  a  desire,  without  giving  the  power  of 
satisfying  it,  and  drove  the  entire  continent  into  a 
state  of  perpetual  political,  religious  and  social 
revolution. 

In  Russia,  a  class  war  like  that  which  developed 
into  the  socialism  and  anarchism  of  Europe  was  at  no 
time  possible,  because  in  Russia  there  never  existed 
a  real  aristocracy  in  the  sense  attached  to  this  term 
in  the  West,  where  the  feudal  nobility  derived  its 
strength  from  historic  rights  and  traditional  preroga- 
tives. Nor  is  there  in  Russia  a  powerful  bourgeoisie 
or  middle  class,  sprung  from  the  people  and  relying 
on  popular  support  to  attain  supremacy.  And  yet 
from  the  time  when  the  "window  into  Europe"  had 
been  broken,  the  no-longer-isolated  Slavic  empire 
could  not  altogether  escape  the  contamination  of  the 
revolutionary  spirit  of  the  West.  Every  concussion 
in  Europe  was  felt  in  Russia  like  the  rumbling  of  a 
distant  earthquake.  These  feeble  echoes  of  Roma- 
Germanic  revolutions  assumed  in  Russia  a  mystic 
character  peculiar  to  the  Slavic  race  and  found  their 
expression  in  what  has  become  generally  known  as 
Russian  Nihilism. 


CIVILIZATION  OF  RUSSIA  297 

The  word  "Nihilist"  appears  for  the  first  time  in 
Tourgeniev*s  novel  "Fathers  and  Sons,"  which  gives 
a  vivid  picture  of  the  movement,  though  with  a  touch 
of  caricature  in  it.  More  serious  and  by  far  more 
characteristic  of  the  time  is  the  work  from  the  pen  of 
Chernyshevsky,  who  shares  with  Alexander  Herzen 
the  right  to  the  name  of  apostle  of  Russian  Nihilism. 
Like  the  founder  and  brilHant  editor  of  the  celebrated 
nihilist  organ  Kolokol  ("The  Bell"),  Chernyshevsky 
drew  his  ideas  from  the  philosophies  of  Hegel  and 
Feuerbach.  His  novel  "What  is  to  Be  Done?," 
written  in  exile  in  Siberia  in  1862,  became  a  sort  of 
gospel  with  the  Nihilists  and  was  widely  diffused  and 
read,  contributing  perhaps  more  than  any  agitation 
towards  the  spread  of  Nihilist  ideas.  It  is  interesting 
to  note  in  this  connection  another  book  from  a 
more  familiar  pen  of  a  great  Christian  Socialist. 
"What  Shall  We  Do  .?"  is  the  title  of  a  book  by  Count 
Tolstoi.  "The  answer  to  this  question,"  exclaims 
the  author,  "was  given  by  John  the  Baptist  two 
thousand  years  ago:  *He  who  hath  two  coats  shall 
give  one  to  him  who  hath  none,  and  he  who  hath  more 
than  wherewith  to  feed  himself  shall  do  likewise.' 
People  go  far  out  of  their  way  to  find  an  answer  which 
they  have  in  the  Bible,"  continues  the  author;  "there 
is  no  other  remedy  for  the  evils  of  society  than  a  re- 
turn to  primitive  Christianity." 

The  name  of  Nihilist  was  used  in  Russia  not  as 
is  commonly  believed,  to  designate  a  man  who  recog- 
nized no  authority  of  any  kind,  but  one  who  bowed 


298  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

before  no  authority  and  accepted  no  principle  without 
critical  examination.  Russian  nihilism  is  therefore 
far  removed  from  either  the  socialism  or  the  anarchism 
of  Western  Europe.  In  Russia  nihilism  was  simply 
the  spirit  of  intellectual  revolt  engendered  by  the 
reading  of  European  philosophers, — Fourier,  Saint- 
Simon,  Robert  Owen  and  especially  Hegel  and 
Proudhon.  "Our  nihilism,"  wrote  Koshelev,  in 
1874,  "is  not,  as  in  the  West,  the  outcome  of  long 
falsely  directed  philosophical  studies  and  ways  of 
thinking,  nor  is  it  the  fruit  of  an  imperfect  social 
organization.  Our  nihilists  are  simply  radicals. 
They  borrow  negative  views  from  foreign  authors  and 
repeat  them  and  magnify  them  ad  nauseam.  The 
wind  has  blown  nihilism  to  us  and  the  wind  will  blow 
it  from  us  again."  This  prophecy  was  realized 
sooner  than  expected  even  by  its  author.  Russian 
nihilism  died  out  after  a  sickly  existence  of  some 
twenty  years.  What  foreigners  still  persist  in  call- 
ing Russian  nihilism  is  merely  the  revolutionary 
spirit  of  a  band  of  misguided  patriots  who  protest 
against  what  they  call  the  despotism  of  an  auto- 
cratic rule,  and  whose  political  ambition  does  not  go 
beyond  the  desire  of  seeing  the  people  represented 
in  the  government. 

Nihilism,  therefore,  is  an  episode  of  the  past.  I 
will  not  detain  you  by  unfolding  the  tale  of  a  move- 
ment that  has  but  an  historic  interest  to-day.  If  I 
devote  a  few  words  to  nihilism  at  all  it  is  only  because 
this  name  has  been  both  intentionally  and  uninten- 


CIVILIZATION  OF  RUSSIA  ^99 

tionally,  but  in  every  case  falsely,  coupled  with  that 
of  anarchism.  In  Russia  anarchism  does  not  exist. 
The  circumstance  that  Russian  names  appear  among 
anarchist  leaders  in  Europe  does  in  no  way  indicate 
that  the  movement  originated  in  Russia  or  finds 
sympathy  among  her  people.  Both  Bakunin  and 
Kropotkin  imbibed  their  anarchist  views  on  foreign 
ground  and  from  foreign  sources,  and,  what  is  more 
to  the  point,  the  seeds  of  their  revolutionary  agita- 
tion fell  on  absolutely  barren  soil  at  home,  while  they 
produced  a  rich  crop  in  Europe,  the  birth-place  and 
hot-bed  of  revolutionary  ideas.  In  Russia  the  at- 
tempts at  violence  and  the  dogma  of  political  assassi- 
nation speedily  called  forth  social  reaction,  causing 
immediate  rupture  between  the  revolutionary  ele- 
ment and  the  liberals  who  had  hitherto  given  their 
hearty  support  to  the  nihilist  movement.  The 
outrages  committed  by  the  agents  of  "underground 
Russia"  opened  the  eyes  of  society  on  the  evil  in- 
fluence of  Western  culture  and  ideas  and  a  return  to 
national  traditions  became  the  cry  of  the  hour.  As  to 
the  revolutionists,  they  were  signally  disillusioned. 
On  one  hand,  the  extraordinary  measures  of  reprisal 
inaugurated  by  the  government,  and,  on  the  other, 
the  excessive  nervousness  of  high  ojfficials  and  of  the 
Czar  himself,  instilled  in  the  revolutionaries  the 
feeling  of  a  force  which  they  did  not  in  reality  pos- 
sess. Frustrated  in  their  attempts  to  draw  the  people 
into  the  movement,  they  fancied  that  the  revolution 
which  they  strove  to  effect  could  be  achieved  by  a 


300  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

few  desperate  men.  They  failed  to  realize  that  the 
traditional  autocracy  of  Russia  is  an  indirect  delega- 
tion of  popular  sovereignty  and  a  tacit  expression  of 
the  general  will  of  the  people  and  that  the  Czar  is  a 
truer  representative  of  Russia  than  would  be  a  par- 
liament or  a  congress.  A  handful  of  conspirators 
cannot  change  the  destiny  of  peoples  nor  can  a  revo- 
lution be  effected  unless  in  conformity  with  national 
sentiment.     Revolutions  are  not  made — they  grow. 


jffttb  2)fnner, 

SXcember  13,  tdOt. 

ENGLISH    ADMINISTRATION    IN    ASIA. 

PROF.  HENRY  MORSE  STEPHENS. 

I  never  feel  entirely  a  stranger  in  speaking  before  a 
Buffalo  audience.  Buffalo  is  the  nearest  city  to  the 
little  burg  in  which  I  dwell  and  there  is  close  enough 
connection  between  Buffalo  and  Ithaca,  educational 
connection  at  any  rate,  to  make  me  feel  in  a  Buffalo 
audience  as  if  there  should  be  at  least  a  section  of  my 
hearers  with  whom  I  may  have  a  certain  personal 
acquaintance. 

And  it  is  without  any  further  preliminary  that 
I  propose  to  turn  almost  immediately  to  the  topic 
upon  which  I  am  asked  to  speak  before  you.  But 
as  a  preliminary,  let  me  state  that  I  do  not  pro- 
pose to  speak  as  an  aggressive — John  Bull,  shall  I 
call  it .? — likely  to  arouse  that  spirit  of  controversy 
the  echoes  of  which  swept  over  for  hours — I  will 
put  it  that  way — of  the  Lehigh  Valley  Railroad 
and  penetrated  into  our  community  at  Ithaca.  I 
propose  indeed  not  in  any  way  to  dwell  as  a  eulogist 
upon  the  particular  manners  and  matters  that  have 
concerned  the  government  of  the  English  in  Asia, 
but  rather  to  point  out  with  a  good  deal,  I  trust,  of 
absolute  impartiality,  the  lessons  made  and  the  small 


302  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

amount  of  successes  absolutely  attained.  May  I, 
as  a  preliminary,  in  order  to  clear  the  ground,  state 
that  I  have  no  personal  knowledge  of  India,  that  I 
have  never  been  in  India  ?  It  is  as  well  that  such 
personal  statement  should  be  made.  On  the  other 
hand,  may  I  be  egotistical  enough  to  state  what 
claims  I  have  to  speak  before  you  to-night }  Al- 
though myself  never  in  India,  my  relatives  for  gen- 
erations always  served  in  India,  and  it  was  my  good 
fortune,  after  leaving  the  university  in  England,  to 
be  engaged  for  quite  a  considerable  number  of  years 
as  the  correspondent  for  a  Calcutta  newspaper.  As 
an  employee  of  the  India  Office  I  once  did  a  thing 
that  no  one  ever  does  except  for  pay,  read  a  gazetteer 
through  for  the  purpose  of  compiling  an  index,  and  I 
owe  much  to  that  rigorous  transaction,  reading  that 
gazetteer  through  three  times,  Mr.  President,  in 
order  to  compile  an  index  volume.  After  that  I  had 
the  good  fortune  to  be  employed  to  teach  the  young 
Indian  civiHans,  at  the  University  of  Cambridge  in 
England,  Indian  history  and  administration.  And 
therefore,  ialthough  I  am  quite  ready  to  immediately 
announce  that  while  I  cannot  speak  with  the  personal 
knowledge  of  Indian  affairs  that  possibly  some  of  you 
may  possess,  yet  during  the  last  twenty  years  of  my 
life  it  has  been  my  business  to  be  pretty  closely  in 
touch  with  Indian  problems  and  with  Indian  affairs. 
When  first  I  came  to  this  country  in  1894,  fresh 
from  England,  I  remember  suggesting  to  the  Uni- 
versity which  I  then  had  the  honor  to  join,  that  I 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  303 

should  give  a  course  of  lectures  on  Indian  history. 
My  reason  was  simple, — I  had  them  all  ready,  wanted 
to  deliver  them.  But  the  president  of  the  University 
declared  that  there  was  no  interest  in  India  and  that 
I  must  get  up  all  my  courses  afresh.  Years  have 
passed  and  now  I  find  a  very  considerable  interest  in 
India,  and  I  presume  that  interest  to  be  very  largely 
on  the  lines  that  your  president  suggested  just  now, 
that  since  the  United  States  has  become  an  Asiatic 
power,  she  would  like  to  see  what  other  Asiatic  pow- 
ers have  been  at;  and  that  this  newly-developed  in- 
terest in  Indian  history  and  Indian  administration — 
because  it  is  newly  developed — is  largely  due  to  the 
Asiatic  complications  due  to  the  United  States  having 
become,  as  I  say,  as  Asiatic  power.  And  that  interest 
seems  to  have  been  surprisingly  developed  of  late.  I 
had  the  good  fortune  to  deliver  a  course  of  lectures 
for  the  Lowell  Institute  at  Boston  on  the  History 
of  the  Administration  of  India  and  for  the  first  time 
was  permitted  to  discuss  Indian  problems  purely  on 
the  administrative  side.  It  is,  it  seems  to  me,  a  yery 
great  misfortune  that  most  of  the  knowledge  which 
educated  people  have  of  India  concerns  the  more  or 
less  striking  and  dramatic  episodes  in  the  history  of 
the  English  in  India.  They  know  about  the  Black 
Hole  of  Calcutta,  a  certain  amount  of  information  is 
current  with  regard  to  the  governments  of  Clive  and 
Warren  Hastings,  a  certain  amount  of  knowledge 
current  with  regard  to  the  mutiny  of  the  Bengal  Army 
and  the  circumstances  that  surrounded  thatj  but  am 


304  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

I  saying  too  much  when  I  say  that  that  is  about  the 
extent  of  the  average  knowledge  of  Indian  history  ? 
Certainly  in  England  it  is  the  average  extent  of  knowl- 
edge of  Indian  history  that  is  possessed.  And  yet  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  important  thing  is  to  try  and 
get  rid  of  these  ideas  of  more  or  less  romantic  im- 
portance and  to  dwell  rather  on  the  history  of  the 
administration  of  India,  because  it  is  in  the  history 
of  the  administration  alone  that  can  be  seen  some 
precedents  of  interest,  perhaps,  in  the  government 
of  Asiatic  peoples  by  a  European  people. 

Let  me  now  deal  with  two  topics  before  I  enter 
upon  my  main  subject.  I  want  first  to  clear  myself 
entirely  of  that  particular  piece  of  cant  which  is  in- 
dicated in  a  certain  supercillious  attitude  sometimes 
to  be  found  in  English  people  but  sometimes  also 
among  very — what  shall  I  call  them? — advanced 
Americans.  They  are  fond  of  saying,  "We  are  such 
a  very  young  people  that  we  don't  know  how  to  do 
these  things,"  and  so  on.  That  same  apolgetic  atti- 
tude on  the  part  of  the  Americans,  that  slightly 
nauseating  attitude  on  the  part  of  Englishmen,  I 
would  at  once  deprecate.  It  seems  to  me  there  is 
nothing  more  absurd  than  the  expectation  of  direct 
imitation  by  a  new  and  younger  nation  of  the  methods 
that  may  have  been  used  by  an  older  one.  I  always 
decline  to  declare,  and  always  oppose  the  theory  that 
one  nation  can  learn  from  another.  The  United 
States  will  solve  its  own  problems  in  its  own  way.  I 
do  not  believe  in  preaching  any  imitative  doctrine 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  305 

whatsoever.  I  think  that  the  more  one  studies  the 
history  of  the  United  States  and  the  problems  that  it 
has  solved,  and  solved  v^ith  wonderful  success,  in 
entire  ignorance  of  European  solutions,  that  it  is 
absurd  for  an  European  to  say  "study  our  solution 
of  these  problems  and  follow  us."  My  own  belief  is 
that  the  United  States  will  solve  its  own  problems  as 
an  Asiatic  power. 

And  the  second  point  I  wish  to  make  as  a  prelirn- 
inary  statement  to  clear  the  ground,  is  that  I  entirely 
understand  the  great  difference  that  exists  between 
the  Indian  question  and  the  Filipino  question. 
There  are  300,000,000  people  in  India,  there  are 
10,000,000  in  the  Philippine  Islands  to  begin  with. 
That  means  that  it  is  a  very  much  smaller  problem. 
Also,  in  the  Philippine  Islands  much  has  been  done  to 
clear  the  ground  by  previous  European  possession. 
There  is  an  amount  of  Christianty  and  an  amount  of 
knowledge  of  European  language  namely,  Spanish, 
in  the  Philippine  Islands  that  did  not  exist  in  India 
when  the  English  took  control  there  and  does  not  yet 
exist.  The  problem  then  is  not  identical  and  the 
fact  that  England  has  pursued  certain  methods  in 
India  does  not  necessarily  indicate  that  those  same 
methods  are  applicable  to  the  Philippine  Islands. 

And  now,  having  made  these  two  cautions,  I  will 
come  to  my  main  thesis,  and  yet  it  seems  to  me  it  is 
not  uninteresting  to  see  what  have  been  the  failures  of 
the  English  in  India,  not  with  any  idea  of  saying, 
"avoid  them  in  the  Philippine  Islands,"  not  with  any 
20 


306  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

idea,  in  dealing  with  successes,  of  saying  "imitate 
them  in  the  Philippine  Islands"  because,  as  I  say, 
the  situation  differs  in  a  great  many  points;  but  be- 
cause to  study  the  problems  of  administration  of 
Asiatics  upon  a  broad  basis,  even  though  it  give  not 
any  exact  example  to  be  followed,  may  yet  suggest 
some  thoughts  worthy  of  consideration. 

Now,  with  regard  to  the  history  of  the  English  ad- 
ministration in  India,  I  think  it  can  be  clearly  pointed 
out  that  the  problems  were  met  in  one  way  for  fifty 
years,  then  in  a  different  way,  as  the  pendulum 
swung  around,  for  another  fifty  years,  and  the  pen- 
dulum then  swung  back  into  a  sort  of  medium  be- 
tween two  extremes,  and  I  propose  to  dwell  at  length 
on  the  two  extremes  and  on  the  medium  which  was 
derived  afterwards.  With  regard  to  the  first  prob- 
lems of  administration  as  they  face  the  English  in 
India,  I  do  not  desire  to  attempt  to  go  into  the  his- 
tory of  the  English  in  India  or  anything  of  that  kind; 
but  it  is  worth  pointing  out,  as  a  remark  preliminary 
to  dealing  with  their  administration  in  India,  that  it 
is  often  misconceived  and  it  is  often  held  for  truth 
that  the  English  went  in  for  a  grabbing  policy  in 
India  and  started  in  the  eighteenth  century  to  take 
India  for  themselves.  Anyone  who  has  ever  studied 
the  history  of  India  knows  how  utterly  false  that 
proposition  is.  To  begin  with,  India  is  not  a  coun- 
try, India  is  not  a  people  and  India  is  not  a  state; 
there  is  not  an  Indian  people.  There  are  great  num- 
bers  of  people  in  India.     India  was  a  continent  of 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  307 

many  peoples  that  had  to  be  dealt  with  and  these 
peoples,  owing  to  the  Asiatic  opposition  of  inter- 
mixture of  blood,  have  been  preserved  in  India  in  sort 
of  layers  or  strata,  and  you  can  see  all  these  different 
strata,  representing  different  races,  different  ideas 
and  practices,  from  the  most  savage  Todas,  those 
who  live  in  holes  in  the  ground,  and  the  other  races 
who  live  on  rats  and  mice  and  such  small  deer,  up  to 
the  Brahmins  whose  ancestors  were  highly  cultivated 
philosophers  centuries  before  the  civilization  of  Eu- 
rope, as  we  have  it  to-day,  took  birth.  India  is  a 
sort  of  a  museum  of  peoples,  but  there  is  no  Indian 
people.  And  further  than  that,  India  has  been  a 
great  number  of  different  states;  but  there  has  never 
been  an  Indian  state.  The  people,  though  highly 
organized  on  Asiatic  lines  for  purposes  of  industry 
and  for  purposes  of  agriculture,  have  never  held  to- 
gether and  produced  a  political  system.  The  result 
has  been  the  people  of  India  have  been  ruled  by  aliens 
for  centuries,  were  in  fact  ruled  by  aliens  at  the  time 
when  the  English  merchants  first  timorously  came 
there.  The  Great  Mogul  Empire  was  written  of 
and  the  Great  Mogul  Empire  was  visited.  It  was  an 
empire  of  foreigners — Mongolians,  as  the  name 
shows.  The  peoples  of  India,  whatever  they  might 
be,  never  showed  political  cohesion;  the  greatest 
strength  was  in  the  lower  strata,  in  the  village  com- 
munity and  in  the  industrial  guild  of  the  manufac- 
turing cities.  They  never  had  any  political  harmony 
and  have  been  governed  by  foreigners  for  centuries 


308  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

and  centuries.  The  great  foreign  government  of  the 
Great  Mogul — which  never  spread  over  the  whole 
of  India  at  any  time;  never  spread  down  to  the  south 
of  India; — went  to  pieces  in  the  eighteenth  century 
and  some  power  had  to  regulate  the  relations  of  the 
peoples  of  India  towards  each  other.  The  control  of 
India  was  forced  upon  the  English  people — not 
sought  by  them.  All  students  of  the  eighteenth 
century  will  know  how  the  Mogul  Empire  fell  to 
pieces  in  the  year  1767.  The  Empire  went  to  pieces 
and  India  became  the  prey  to  anybody,  while  Mara- 
tha  leaders  rode  their  horses  up  and  down  the  length 
and  breadth  of  India  pillaging  and  murdering,  in  the 
absence  of  any  political  band,  and  the  country  abso- 
lutely went  to  pieces.  Someone  had  to  be  there,  and 
the  peoples — not  the  people,  but  the  peoples — of 
India  expected  there  should  be  somebody  to  keep  the 
peace,  and  it  so  happened  that  the  great  change  in  the 
world's  civilization,  due  to  the  development,  as  Capt. 
Mahan  has  pointed  out,  of  sea-power,  indicated  that 
the  power  that  should  appease  the  peoples  of  India 
should  be  a  power  based  upon  the  sea — should  be 
England  or  France.  The  struggle  between  the 
English  and  the  French  in  India  was  brief.  It  ended 
in  the  triumph  of  the  English,  and  the  East  India 
Company  came  to  be  the  strongest  force  in  India,  the 
force  to  whom  all  moral  duty  pointed  out  the  neces- 
sity, since  they  were  the  strongest  power  in  India,  of 
preserving  the  peace  politically.  The  East  India 
Company  was  a  company  of  merchants  who  started 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  309 

in  150  years  earlier  by  establishing  factories  in  India 
for  the  purpose  of  collecting  India  commodities. 
How  could  a  commercial  company  carry  out  the  work 
of  government  ?  Commercial  company  objected, 
commercial  company  objected  with  vigor;  the  di- 
rectors of  that  great  company  wanted  to  pay  good 
dividends;  they  wouldn't  be  re-elected  otherwise; — I 
beheve  that  is  still  probably  true  with  regard  to  cor- 
porations to-day; — they  wanted  to  pay  good  divi- 
dends and  therefore  they  did  not  want  to  govern. 
Every  possible  opposition  was  made  by  the  East 
India  Company's  directors  from  the  very  beginning  to 
the  acquisition  of  territory.  They  pointed  out  again 
and  again  that  this  thing  was  expensive;  indeed,  they 
refused  to  accept  the  territory  of  Bengal  that  fell  into 
their  hands  after  the  victory  of  Clive.  Clive  sug- 
gested to  the  English  crown  that  the  English  crown 
should  take  possession  of  Bengal.  The  person  to 
whom  he  suggested  it  was  that  very  wise  and 
great  statesman  whose  name  is  commemorated  in 
the  City  of  Pittsburg — it  was  the  great  William 
Pitt,  who  shook  his  head  when  the  suggestion  was 
made  and  declared  that  it  would  not  be  well  to 
strengthen  the  Crown  of  England  by  the  revenues  of 
Bengal.  He  pointed  out  that  the  Crown  was  quite 
dangerous  enough  as  it  was  and  he  refused  to  take 
possession  of  Bengal.  Just  as  twenty  years  later  his 
son,  the  younger  Pitt,  combated  the  idea  of  taking  the 
direct  government  of  Bengal  by  the  English  Parlia- 
ment for  fear  that  the  revenues  thereof  should  be 


310  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

used  for  the  support  of  one  political  party.  And 
therefore  it  was  that  circumstances  in  England,  cir- 
cumstances connected  with  the  position  of  crown 
and  parliament,  circumstances  connected  with  the 
party  system,  caused  everyone  to  impose  upon  a  com- 
mercial company  the  business  of  government. 

Now  commercial  companies  are  formed  for  the  pur- 
pose of  earning  dividends  and  not  for  the  purpose  of 
governing  Asiatics.  Considering  then  the  attitude  and 
the  position  necessarily  adopted,  it  can  be  understood 
that  the  first  results  of  the  falling  of  the  province  of 
Bengal  into  the  hands  of  the  East  India  Company's 
commerical  servants,  bookkeepers  and  writers,  was 
not  likely  to  be  comfortable  for  the  people  of  India. 
The  Company  refused  responsibility,  the  Crown  of 
England  refused  responsibility,  the  Parliament  re- 
fused responsibility,  and  the  Company's  servants 
in  India  made  fortunes,  and  the  period  from  the  time 
of  Clive  to  the  period  of  Hastings  in  Bengal  is  a  time 
during  which  the  Company's  servants  made  fortunes 
because  no  one  would  interfere  with  them.  And 
then  came  the  first  period  of  English  administration 
in  India.  The  greatest  Englishman  that  ever  went 
to  India,  the  greatest  name  in  all  Indian  history,  and 
by  my  faith,  I  believe  one  of  the  greatest  names  in 
English  history,  is  the  name  of  Warren  Hastings 
(applause).  It  happens  that  that  great  hero  of  gov- 
ernment is  hung  up  as  a  scarecrow  for  every  crow  to 
peck  at,  because  it  happened  that  a  great  orator 
whose  passions  were  stronger  than   his  sense,   and 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  311 

afterwards  a  distinguished  Review  writer  whose  elo- 
quence and  poHtical  animosities  were  stronger  than 
his  historical  judgment,  chose  to  treat  Warren  Hast- 
ings as  one  of  the  most  corrupt  and  most  awful  of 
men.  The  tremendous  eloquence  of  Burke  and  the 
extraordinary  descriptive  faculty  of  Macaulay  have 
been  the  cause  for  the  pilloring  of  Warren  Hastings. 
We  know  now  that  all  the  accusations  made  against 
Hastings  by  Burke  and  all  the  accusations  revamped 
by  Macaulay  in  that  celebrated  Review  article,  have 
been  refuted,  but,  as  Sir  James  Stephens  says,  in  the 
preface  to  one  of  his  books,  refuting  all  of  those  accusa- 
tions,— "all  the  world  reads  Burke  and  Macaulay, 
but  who  will  read  my  book?"  The  general  public 
does  not  read  Sir  James  Stephens'  works  except  the 
lawyers,  who  find  it  useful  I  believe  to  read  the  digest 
of  the  law  of  evidence,  but  otherwise  people  do  not 
go  to  Stephens  to  read  the  story  and  the  entire  refuta- 
tion of  the  charges  made  against  Mr.  Warren  Hastings 
in  that  capacity,  who — well,  I  mentioned  one  date;  I 
am  not  going  to  talk  a  lot  of  dates — who,  in  1772 
took  charge  of  the  administration  of  Bengal  and  who 
adopted  the  rules  of  administration  that  were  fol- 
lowed in  India  for  50  years. 

Mr.  Warren  Hastings  differed  very  greatly  from 
the  other  commercial  gentlemen,  clerks,  bookkeepers 
and  what  not,  who  had  gone  out  to  India  in  the 
days  prior  to  the  conquest  of  Clive.  His  differ- 
ence lay  in  the  fact  that  he  went  and  lived  in  and 
among  the  people  of  India,  that  he  took  the  trouble 


312  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

to  learn  the  language  of  the  people  of  Bengal, 
that  he  learned  their  customs,  that  he  could  talk 
to  them  and  could  understand  their  methods  of 
thought,  realize  that  their  method  of  civilization  was 
not  something  to  be  spurned  by  the  arrogant  suzerain, 
something  not  worth  looking  at  at  all,  but  that  it 
was  a  nation  civilized  and  these  people  had  a  right  to  a 
law,  literature  and  language  of  their  own,  and  when 
the  chance  came  to  him  which  always  comes  to  a 
strong  man,  he  was  the  one  man  who  understood  the 
Bengali.  It  so  happened  that  Mr.  Hastings,  in  tak- 
ing charge  of  the  government  of  Bengal,  was  able  to 
take  charge  with  a  knowledge  of  Bengali  ideas.  To 
this  day,  as  even  Macaulay  remarks  of  the  time  when 
he  wrote  that  it  was  so,  and  it  is  true  to-day,  the  one 
great  name  among  the  natives  of  Bengal,  of  all  the 
Enghshmen  that  have  ever  been  in  India,  is  Warren 
Hastings,  the  man  who  knew  them  as  they  were. 
And  it  was  this  great  man  who,  in  taking  control,  re- 
solved to  establish  a  system  of  administration  in 
Bengal.  Now,  Mr.  Hastings  is  a  typical  eighteenth 
century  figure.  That  is  to  say,  he  had  none  of  that 
nervous  belief  in  Christianity  that  distinguished  men 
of  an  earlier  time  of  religious  consideration;  he  was  a 
man  who  looked  at  things  very  much  with  a  rational- 
istic attitude  of  the  eighteenth-century  mind,  and 
Mr.  Hastings,  therefore,  was  not  inclined  to  try  and 
force  religoius  ideas  of  Christianity  upon  the  people 
of  Bengal.  On  the  other  hand,  he  had  studied,  as 
the  men  of  the  eighteenth  century  had,  his  classics. 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  313 

He  knew  how  Rome  governed  her  provinces  and  he 
deliberately,  in  taking  charge  of  the  administration  of 
Bengal,  adopted  the  Roman  theory.  Do  you  re- 
member what  is  perhaps  the  most  characteristic  word 
with  regard  to  Roman  administration  that  appears 
in  the  whole  of  the  Bible;  it  is  in  those  five  words  that 
come  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles;  "And  Gallio  cared 
for  none  of  these  things;"  and  that  was  exactly  Mr. 
Hastings*  attitude.  He  was  not  going  to  interfere 
with  any  of  the  things  of  the  people  who  were  to  be 
governed  by  the  East  India  Company  as  Rome  had 
governed  her  provinces.  What  was  their  religion, 
what  were  their  customs,  what  were  their  habits  to 
him?  "And  Gallio  cared  for  none  of  these  things." 
Mr.  Hastings,  on  taking  control,  first  wrote  to  the 
Company  that  they  must  get  rid  of  this  pretense  of 
not  governing.  That  the  administration  had  to  be 
conducted  by  the  Company  didn't  matter;  if  the 
company  found  it  expensive,  so  much  the  worse  for 
them,  but  it  had  to  be  administered  by  the  Company. 
No  longer  could  the  mismanagement  that  led  indi- 
vidual book-keepers  to  make  fortunes  continue.  He 
therefore  took  possession  of  Bengal  in  the  Company's 
name,  transferred  the  headquarters  to  Calcutta  and 
set  to  work  to  develop  a  system  of  administration. 
He  divided  Bengal  up  into  a  number  of  districts,  at 
the  head  of  each  of  which  he  placed  a  man  named 
a  collector,  whose  business  was  to  carry  out  the  spirit 
of  government  that  had  existed  in  the  old  Mahome- 
dan  days.     Each  collector  was   to  be  the  supreme 


314  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

authority  in  the  district,  something  like  a  French  pre- 
fect of  to-day;  was  to  be  the  engineer,  the  sanitary 
authority,  the  judge,  the  ruler,  the  police  authority  of 
the  district.  "But,"  says  Mr.  Hastings,  "observe 
the  habits  of  the  people."  What  law  was  to  be  ad- 
ministered .?  The  law  to  which  they  were  accus- 
tomed. If  they  were  Hindoos  and  there  was  a  suit 
at  law,  Hindoo  law  was  to  apply;  if  they  were  Moham- 
medans, Mohammedan  law;  if  the  suit  was  between 
a  Mohammedan  and  a  Hindoo,  the  law  of  the  de- 
fendant was  to  be  administered.  But  it  may  be 
doubted,  how  did  these  collectors  know  the  law .? 
They  were  not  supposed  to.  They  were  to  preside  in 
court,  with  their  assessors,  Hindoo  and  Mohammedan, 
to  help  them.  Indeed,  they  were  to  work  as  natives. 
What  they  had  to  help  out  was  the  uprightness  of 
the  British  name;  they  had  to  carry  out  what  decisions 
the  English  court  might  give.  But  they  were  to 
care  for  none  of  these  things.  This,  then,  was  Mr. 
Hastings'  idea;  he  so  thoroughly  believed  in  it  that  he 
refused  to  send  men  to  govern  until  they  knew  the 
language  of  the  natives  and  could  use  their  assessors 
and  their  native  assistants  intelligently.  With  re- 
gard to  the  education  of  the  people,  it  never  occurred 
to  him  to  introduce  a  new  language.  He  spent  some 
of  his  own  savings  in  the  magnificent  college  at  Cal- 
cutta in  which  some  of  the  natives  might  be  educated 
in  their  own  law  and  their  own  religion,  and  so  clearly 
was  this  doctrine  of  Mr.  Hastings  carried  into  effect, 
that  as  the  empire  began  to  grow  up  in  India   under 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  316 

the  management  of  other  great  viceroys  and  gov- 
ernors-general the  same  principles  Yftvt  applied 
everywhere.  The  Madras  presidency  was  formed. 
Mr.  Thomas  Monroe  went  through  the  Madras 
provinces  and  there  discovered  what  the  Madrasses 
wanted — something  quite  different  from  what  the 
Bengalis  wanted — and  gave  it  to  them. 

When  the  presidency  of  Bombay  was  organized 
some  years  later  the  same  tendency  was  observed. 
The  full  swing  then  of  the  tendency  of  administra- 
tion as  founded  by  Warren  Hastings  acted  for  over 
fifty  years,  which  was  that  the  native  ruler  was  to 
study  and  understand  the  different  ideas  of  the  dif- 
ferent native  peoples  and  give  them  peace — as  Mr. 
Kipling  says:  "By  the  peace  among  our  peoples  let 
them  know  we  serve  the  Lord."  That  was  the  main 
aim  of  the  Hastings  idea  of  administration, — not 
to  improve  their  morals.  Mr.  Hastings  and  the  men 
that  followed  disapproved  of  missionaries  entirely. 
Gallio,  you  remember,  disapproved  of  missionaries. 
And  it  was  with  a  strong  idea  not  to  bring  in  English 
ideas.  They  were  to  be  ruled  by  their  own  ideas. 
So  thoroughly  was  this  carried  into  effect  that  the 
English  troops  used  to  turn  to  salute  their  idols  on  the 
way  from  their  town  to  their  country  houses.  After- 
wards was  developed  in  Calcutta  a  course  of  dealing 
with  trusts  in  charge  of  idol  temples.  I  always  re- 
member one  case  in  particular;  a  certain  pious  Hindoo 
had  left  a  piece  of  property  the  income  from  which 
was  to  be  devoted  to  pouring  melted  butter  upon  the 


316  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

head  of  a  particularly  famous  idol.  The  property 
happened  to  lie,  as  property  sometimes  does,  within 
the  circuit  of  a  growing  city  and  the  property  became 
exceedingly  valuable  so  that  the  revenues  from  that 
property  when  it  came  inside  of  the  city  of  Calcutta, 
would  have  been  enough  to  bathe  that  idol  in  melted 
butter  day  and  night  for  a  great  many  days  and  nights. 
That  question  had  to  come  in  court,  and  I  believe  the 
decision  was  that  a  certain  amount  was  to  be  put  to 
the  temple  and  the  balance  was  to  be  put  for  educa- 
tional purposes — sort  of  a  safe  way  to  spend  a  balance 
under  those  conditions.  And  the  whole  of  this 
branch  of  jurisprudence,  I  say,  developed  by  the 
determination  of  Mr.  Hastings  and  his  successors 
was,  not  to  interfere  in  any  jot  or  tittle  with  native 
ideas,  native  principles,  native  religions  or  native 
customs.  Missionaries  were  carefully  pushed  out  of 
the  way.  The  first  great  missionaries  to  India  of  the 
Protestant  faith  had  to  live  in  one  of  the  Danish 
settlements.  It  was  not  safe  for  them  to  live  in  Cal- 
cutta. They  would  be  deported  if  they  went  there. 
Everything  was  done  along  these  Gallio-like  lines.  In 
addition,  I.  should  note  that  an  important  successor 
of  Mr.  Hastings,  Lord  Wolseley,  the  celebrated 
Irishman  who  made  the  English  the  power  in  India, 
developed  one  new  thought, — not  of  administration, — 
but  it  is  one  to  which  I  wish  to  allude.  Wolseley 
discovered  that  the  people  of  India  preferred  to  have 
rulers  who  were  descendants  from  their  own  old 
native  rulers  and  that  they  had  a  fancy  for  being  gov- 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  317 

erned  by  their  own  laws  and  their  own  people  and  pre- 
serving a  semblance  of  their  old  liberties;  and  therefore 
it  was  that  he  developed  feudatory  India,  developing 
the  principle  of  controlling  such  native  states  through 
persons  known  as  residents,  allowing  the  rajahs,  or 
whatever  they  might  be,  to  continue,  to  all  the  face  of 
the  world,  as  governors  of  various  states,  while  they 
had  to  do  what  the  resident  told  them.  This  was  a 
system  since  found  sometimes  useful  in  administering 
Asiatic  peoples.  It  has  been  found  as  well  at  least 
to  leave  that  appearance  of  sovereign  independence, 
even  if  there  is  a  resident  or  somebody  who  shall  pre- 
vent the  native  ruler,  on  the  one  hand,  from  plotting 
against  his  suzerain  lord,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
from  over-oppressing  his  people.  Matters  were  in 
this  situation  in  India  during  what  I  have  called  the 
first  period.  The  only  person  who  added  anything 
was  Lord  Wolseley,  whose  idea  was  not  of  painting 
the  map  of  India  red  but  of  allowing  many  native 
states  to  continue  under  the  control  of  residents. 

And  the  second  stage  develops,  particularly  owing 
to  the  eloquence  of  Mr.  Wilberforce,  who  insisted 
upon  what  he  should  be  allowed  in  India,  partly  ow- 
ing to  an  increasing  knowledge  of  affairs  in  England. 
When  Bengal  was  conquered,  after  Clive's  victory  at 
Plassey,  the  people  in  England  knew  as  little  about 
Bengal,  I  verily  believe,  as  the  people  of  the  United 
States  knew  about  the  Philippine  Islands  at  the  time 
Dewey's  fleet  first  appeared  in  Manila  Bay.  People  in 
England  knew  nothing  about  it.    After  they  had  been 


318  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

there  fifty  or  sixty  years  they  were  flooded  with  in- 
formation of  certain  kinds.  The  pious  people  were 
very  much  disturbed  by  the  practices  they  heard  of 
Sati  or  widow-burning,  troops  saluting  idols,  female 
infanticide;  and  public  opinion  grew  to  such  a  strong 
effect  that  the  second  period  was  inaugurated  by  Mr. 
William  Renting.  Then  begins  the  second  period. 
Benting's  idea  was  the  reverse  of  that  of  Hastings. 
It  was  to  introduce  as  many  of  the  English  things  as 
possible.  Take  Sati  or  widow-burning.  In  the  days 
of  Hastings  nobody  interfered;  if  a  widow  wanted  to 
burn  herself,  it  was  a  custom  of  the  country,  nobody 
should  interfere.  But  by  the  time  the  people  had 
been  reading  of  this  fifty  or  sixty  years,  the  people 
determined  that  should  be  stopped.  Benting 
issued  a  decree;  widow-burning  was  to  cease.  By  the 
work  of  the  residents  of  the  various  states  widow- 
burning  was  put  an  end  to  in  the  various  states  of 
India.  It  is  true  the  widows  have  not  much  to  con- 
gratulate themselves  on,  because  they  are  now  forced 
to  lead  a  most  miserable  life,  dressed  in  sack  cloth,  if 
they  survive  their  husbands.  There  was  also  a  cer- 
tain sect  of  what  might  be  called  holy  murderers  or 
thugs  who  never  had  been  interfered  with  before. 
These  were  worshipers  of  a  goddess  who,  with 
appropriate  religious  ceremony,  strangled  trav- 
ellers on  the  highway  and  picked  their  pockets. 
Benting  passed  his  decree  against  thuggings.  An- 
other practice  was  female  infanticide.  Benting  de- 
clared that  infant  girls  must  not  be  murdered   to 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  319 

a  greater  extent  than  infant  boys  and  that  any  female 
infanticide  must  cease.  Very  difficult  to  prove, 
female  infanticide  was,  so  the  very  simple  way  this  ad- 
ministrator went  about  it  was,  wherever  he  found 
the  proportion  of  girl  babies  was  smaller  than  it 
ought  to  be,  in  a  village,  he  quartered  a  company  of 
troops  in  that  village  until  there  was  the  right  pro- 
portion of  girl  babies,  and  there  was  a  ready  way  of 
aiding  matters.  Human  sacrifice  was  another  matter 
interfered  with  in  India.  That  had  been  quite  com- 
mon. The  last  human  sacrifice  in  India  always 
struck  me  as  rather  strange  as  showing  the  relations 
between  the  east  and  west.  In  the  mountains  of 
India  a  boy  was  sacrificed  in  order  that  the  chief 
should  get  a  favorable  decision  in  the  privy  council 
who  sat  in  India.  When  one  thinks  of  the  venerable 
judges  in  the  courts  in  London  having  their  decision 
aflPected  by  cutting  the  throat  of  a  little  India  boy,  it 
shows  how  far  the  east  is  from  the  west.  That  was 
forbidden  and  they  were  given  to  understand  that 
they  must  not  burn  their  widows  and  they  must  not 
kill  their  girl  babies,  must  not  continue  their  holy 
murdering  and  must  not  have  human  sacrifices.  The 
pendulum  swung  in  that  direction  and  very  speedily, 
instead  of  clamor,  caring  for  none  of  these  things,  the 
people  of  India  were  startled  by  being  Europeanized 
as  quickly  as  possible,  and  in  that  work  of  European- 
izing  nothing  was  more  important  than  what  should  be 
done  with  regard  to  education.  Mr.  Hastings  and 
the  men  who  belonged  to  his  generation,  were  unable 


320  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

to  encourage  the  indigenous  Hindoo  and  Mohamme- 
dan on  education; — they  have  good  sense,  these 
Mohammedans  and  the  Hindoos.  But  in  the  days  of 
Mr.  WilHam  Benting  there  came  to  India  Mr.  Thomas 
B.  Macaulay,  afterwards  Lord  Macaulay,  who,  as  a 
member  of  the  council,  knew  all  about  Indian  prob- 
lems and  who  instantly  set  to  work  to  declare  that  the 
English  language  should  be  introduced  for  the  general 
vehicle  of  education  in  India.  There  was  a  long 
discussion  between  a  party  known  as  the  Orientalists 
and  a  party  known  as  Englanders.  These  two  par- 
ties struggled  for  a  long  time  as  to  whether  there 
should  be  a  system  of  education  based  upon  the 
English  language.  Macaulay  won;  Macaulay  gen- 
erally did  win  any  suit  he  was  concerned  in  because 
he  was  so  honestly  convinced  of  the  right  of  his  cause 
and  had  such  language  at  command  to  prove  the 
entire  imbecility  of  his  opponents.  Therefore  the 
system  was  introduced  of  attempting  to  bring  about 
the  system  of  English;  universities  in  English,  col- 
leges to  be  founded,  etc.  The  Anglo-vernacular 
schools  were  founded  by  which  natives  have  been 
taught  in  private  schools  by  natives. 

No  doubt  Macaulay's  arguments  were  exceedingly 
eloquent, — likely  he  was  right;  it  is  not  for  one  living 
three  generations  later  to  declare  that  he  was  wrong; 
but  at  any  rate  the  English  that  he  introduced  is  the 
sort  of  English  that  we  know  in  England  as  Babu 
English.  You  may  have  heard  of  Babu  English.  It 
is  not  English,  but  it  is  a  very  interesting  language. 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  321 

It  is  English  as  learned  in  India  by  people  who  cannot 
connote  the  English  language  because  they  have  not 
kept  the  English  surroundings.  I  sometimes  wonder 
whether  a  Filipino-American  language  may  not  come 
into  existence  under  the  present  system  which  would 
be  as  like  English  as  Babu  English  may  be.  At  any 
rate,  the  thing  was  to  force  upon  the  people  of  India 
a  foreign  medium,  force  upon  them  the  EngHsh  lan- 
guage. The  development  was  swift  after  the  days  of 
Macaulay.  Afterwards  the  government  tried  to  Angli- 
cize India  more.  They  were  given  a  university  and  uni- 
versity degrees,  they  were  endowed  with  the  penny- 
post  and  were  taught  to  write  letters,  which  none  of 
them  could  read;  telegraph  was  established,  railroads 
were  started — all  the  advantages  of  the  West  were 
hurried  upon  them,  and  instead  of  being  grateful 
they  were  amazed,  and  there  are  people  to-day  who 
consider  that  possibly  it  was  a  mistake  to  worry 
Western  ideas  quite  so  rapidly  upon  the  people  of 
India.  There  are  people  who  think  that  the  applica- 
tion of  a  different  sort  of  civilization,  with  a  sort  of 
slap-bang  effect  upon  a  very  old  and  indigenous  civil- 
ization was  somewhat  of  a  mistake.  But,  whether  or 
not,  they  hurried  on  and  under  Lord  Dalhousie's  ad- 
ministration— the  greatest  administrator  England 
ever  sent  there  from  the  days  of  Warren  Hastings — 
the  whole  idea  was  to  Anglicize  them  as  near  as  possi- 
ble. Dalhousie  was  as  earnest  in  his  belief  that  he  was 
doing  good  as  Hastings  was.  The  only  thing  was,  he 
did  not  know  anything  about  the  people.     Hastings 

21 


322  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

did;  he  had  lived  among  them.  Therefore  it  was 
Dalhousie  who  founded  the  university,  postoffice,  the 
telegraph  and  the  rest  of  these  things.  Incidentally 
he  knew  more  about  things  than  Wolseley.  So  he 
began  to  abolish  the  feudatory  system  and  annexed 
state  after  state,  declaring  that  government  under 
English  rule  was  much  better  for  the  people,  he  knew 
it  was  better,  than  government  under  that  sham 
native  ruler  with  a  resident  whispering  in  his  ear. 
That  was  the  second  period. 

In  1857  occurred  the  mutiny  of  the  Bengal  Army. 
I  am  not  going  to  speak  of  the  story  of  the  great  Sepoy 
Mutiny.  It  is  quite  true  that  it  can  be  argued  that 
the  Sepoy  Mutiny  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  an- 
nexation of  India.  It  may  be  clearly  demonstrated 
that  the  Mutiny  of  the  Sepoys  was  due  to  the  serving 
out  of  cow's  fat  on  cartridges  to  the  soldiers,  etc. 
Yet  quite  apart  from  the  mutiny  of  certain  soldiers 
was  the  fact  that  a  large  part  of  the  inhabitants  of 
India  did  sympathize  with  the  mutineers,  and  in  one 
very  particular  state  above  all  others  the  people  stood 
by  the  mutineers  and  murdered  every  Englishman 
they  could  get  hold  of.  It  looked  as  if  there  had 
been  a  false  conception  somewhere;  and  by  the  time 
the  Sepoy  Mutiny  was  put  down  and  the  govern- 
ment was  taken  over  to  the  Crown,  then  came  the 
question  what  policy  should  be  adopted.  Obviously 
the  Dalhousie  policy — go  into  specific  reasons  as  you 
might — had  not  been  entirely  fruitful  to  all  the  peo- 
ples in  India.     Therefore  the  Crown  issued  its  famous 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  323 

decree  permitting  adoption,  from  which  time  no 
native  state  in  India  has  ever  been  annexed.  There 
have  been  some  annexations  on  the  frontiers,  like 
Upper  Burma,  but  in  the  interior  the  same  number 
of  states  exist  to-day  as  existed  in  1857.  In  other 
words,  the  lesson  had  been  learned  that  even  if  the 
Englishman  could  not  understand  why  the  na- 
tive preferred  the  appearance  of  his  native  govern- 
ment, Hked  to  have  his  rajah  and  his  long  descended 
Hke  from  the  sun  or  moon  or  stars,  whatever  it  was; 
he  liked  to  have  his  laws  administered  in  his  name, 
and  even  if  the  native  knew  there  was  a  resident  gov- 
ernor whispering  orders,  the  resident  was  rather 
looked  upon  as  a  careful  person  who  would  prevent 
native  government  from  becoming  too  arduous.  The 
danger  of  over  and  too  speedy  annexation  was  learned. 
Men  in  the  service  were  made  to  learn  the  languages 
of  the  people,  greater  encouragement  was  given — not 
to  go  back  to  Warren  Hastings'  time;  widow-burning 
or  Sati  was  not  started  over  again,  nor  female  infan- 
ticide, but  there  were  no  more  tactics  in  the  way  of 
interfering  with  native  customs  or  anything  else. 
This,  of  course,  brought  the  Indian  administration 
of  modern  times  greatly  under  the  notice  of  the 
reHgious  and  moral  people  at  home.  Englishmen 
are  well  acquainted  with  the  crusades  that  have  con- 
stantly been  made  in  regard  to  the  people  of  India — 
noteworthy  the  question  of  opium  The  consump- 
tion of  opium  is  a  wicked  thing,  say  the  fanatics; 
therefore,  people  must  not  have  any  opium.     And 


324  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

the  present  government  of  India  has,  on  the  one 
hand,  to  learn  to  fight  off  the  propositions  made  for 
trying  to  thrust  EngHsh  ideas  too  swiftly  upon  the 
peoples  of  India,  while,  upon  the  other  hand,  it  has 
to  prevent  the  vantage  ground  of  loss  that  has  already 
been  gained.  Very  slowly  in  the  administration  of 
India  have  new  ideas  been  introduced  and  still  more 
slowly  are  they  being  introduced  now.  On  the  ques- 
tion of  taxation,  for  instance,  resort  is  now  had  solely, 
almost  solely,  to  the  old  Asiatic  practice  of  land- 
revenue.  Asiatics  do  not  understand  taxes;  they  do 
not  pay  them;  they  do  not  know  what  they  mean. 
They  have  been  always  accustomed  to  pay  a  certain 
proportion  of  the  produce  of  the  soil;  it  is  known  as 
land-revenue.  The  old  Asiatic  rulers  carried  on  their 
expenses  of  government  entirely,  solely,  from  land- 
revenues. 

And  by  such  means  as  this  the  introduction  of  tax- 
ation has  been  brought  about.  The  same  in  regard 
to  law.  In  a  few  matters  in  the  penal  code,  and  in 
the  law  of  evidence  certain  maxims  and  ideas  of  Eng- 
lish law  have  been  introduced,  but  very  zealously  are 
Hindoo  laws  preserved — for  instance,  in  the  admin- 
istration of  wills  and  other  matters.  The  danger  of 
Anglicizing  too  fast  and  the  danger  of  refusing  to 
change  at  all  have  been  learned  and  a  middle  course 
is  now  somewhat  swingingly  followed.  I  say  some- 
what swingingly.  Sometimes  the  House  of  Commons 
gets  very  angry  and  passes  resolutions  which  it  is  very 
difficult  for  the  viceroys  of  India  to  evade  obeying. 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  325 

and  at  other  times  the  necessities  produced  by  certain 
practices  in  India  that  are  invalid  have  to  be  inter- 
fered w^ith  by  the  government. 

The  point  that  I  would  then  come  to  is  that  a  study 
of  Indian  history  does  not  go  and  give  a  number  of 
specific  lessons  for  the  administration  of  other  Asiatic 
peoples,  but  it  at  least  shows  the  danger  of  extremes 
and  the  advisability  of  going  slow.  But  I  will  take  my 
next  point.  I  am  speaking  to-night  and  I  have  writ- 
ten on  English  Administration  in  Asia,  not  simply 
in  India,  because  I  want  to  draw  your  attention 
specially  to  the  fact  that  the  lessons  learned  in  India 
are  applied  Farther  East  and  in  those  dependencies 
the  government  which  should  be  most  interesting 
to  Americans,  because  the  Asiatic  peoples  governed 
are  Malays,  the  same  essentially  as  the  people  of  the 
Philippine  Islands;  that  in  the  government  in  the 
Farther  East  the  ideas  learned  in  India  have  been 
applied.  If  many  of  you  have  looked  at  the  Straits 
Settlements  you  must  have  noticed  from  the  map 
that  the  English  only  hold  three  tiny  little  red  patches, 
the  little  island  in  the  great  state  of  Singapore,  the 
little  island  of  Pulo  Pinang  and  Malacca,  but  their 
power  is  all  over  that  Farther  East,  and  the  reason 
it  has  not  been  painted  red  was  because  expansion 
did  not  take  place  there  until  after  the  Sepoy  Mutiny. 
EngHsh  government  is  predominant  through  the 
whole  of  the  peninsula,  but  there  have  been  no  ad- 
ministrators. The  Islands  of  Pulo  Pinang  and  all 
sorts  of  other  excellent  little  states  there  are  ruled 


326  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

by  natives,  but  there  is  a  British  resident  giving  ad- 
vice and  seeing  that  they  build  railroads,  seeing  that 
they  establish  schools,  seeing  that  education  is  given 
in  the  indigenous  language  for  primary  education  and 
that  there  are  Anglo-vernacular  schools  v^hich  will 
prepare  children  to  go  to  the  college  at  Singapore. 
In  other  words,  the  lesson  that  had  been  taught 
in  India  by  the  mutiny  of  1857  was  very  much  ap- 
plied in  the  Straits  Settlements.  All  through  the 
English  dealings  then  in  the  Farther  East,  where  they 
have  had  to  deal  with  Malay  peoples, — Malay  peoples 
of  the  same  stripe  as  the  people  of  the  Philippine 
Islands,  but  without  the  Spanish  veneer, — where  they 
have  had  to  deal  with  Malay  peoples  they  have  dealt 
with  them  under  the  influence  of  the  lessons  learned 
in  India.  They  preserved  their  state  sovereignty, 
they  worked  through  residents,  they  have  worked 
slowly,  they  have  not  hurried  to  Anglicize  the  Malay 
peoples,  and  as  a  result  there  is  peace.  Go  across  the 
straits  to  the  Island  of  Sumatra.  The  Dutch  have  been 
waging  war  there  practically  ever  since  the  Dutch 
have  been  there,  against  the  Achenese,  but  they  can- 
not defeat  them.  The  people  who  live  there  are  hard- 
fighting  Achenese.  The  story  of  the  Dutch  in  the 
Farther  East  is,  however,  another  story,  as  Kipling 
would  say,  and  it  isnotmy  purpose  to  deal  with  them, 
but  merely  to  lay  emphasis  on  further  certain  points 
of  the  English  administration  in  the  East,  because  the 
mistakes  learned  in  India  have  been  applied,  as  I  say, 
wherever  Asiatics  came  under  English  control. 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  327 

Now  I  think  you  will  admit  that  I  have  not  been 
dealing  with  eulogy  with  the  English  administration. 
I  have,  rather,  desired  to  point  out  where  mistakes 
were  made  and  how  mistakes  have  been  made.  The 
government  of  the  English  in  India  to-day  is  by  no 
means  faultless.  Any  number  of  accusations  have 
been  brought  against  that  government  except  one — 
and  that  is  that  the  administrators  that  the  English 
sent  there  are  corrupt.  That  accusation  is  never 
made.  That  there  may  be  mistakes  in  administra- 
tion— for  instance  the  comment  is  made  that  it  has 
been  a  mistake  to  give  the  people  railroads  too  soon;  to 
give  them,  before  they  know  how  to  understand  them, 
advantages  of  postoffice  methods;  that  to  force  edu- 
cation on  them  too  swiftly  has  been  a  mistake,  is  often 
said.  But  the  duty  that  falls  upon  every  fair  stu- 
dent of  Indian  administration,  I  think,  is, — although 
there  is  no  period  at  which  the  English  administra- 
tion cannot  be  criticised,  and  justly  criticised,  criti- 
cised from  many  different  ways; — one  thing  at  least 
was  learned  by  those  terrible  ten  years  before  Mr. 
Hastings  took  control: — to  preserve  the  absolute 
purity  of  the  administrators. 

And  it  may  be  asked  then,  what  application  might 
be  possibly  made  from  these  somewhat  loose  re- 
marks in  regard  to  the  development  of  the  administra- 
tion of  the  English  in  the  Farther  East,  in  regard  to 
those  great  responsibilities  of  which  your  President 
spoke,  which  have  fallen  upon  America  as  an  Asiatic 
power?     Not   the  duty  of  direct  imitation,  surely. 


328  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Not,  on  the  other  hand,  the  duty  of  attempting  to 
confuse  the  Indian  and  the  Filipino  problems.  As  I 
say,  the  difference  is  great  between  them.  The 
Spaniards,  at  any  rate,  have  given  a  certain  amount 
of  Christianity  and  a  veneer  of  civilization  to  many 
of  the  people  of  the  Philippine  Islands.  But,  v^ithout 
actually  imitating  anything  in  England,  might  not 
it  be  possible  to  argue  that  one  lesson  might  be 
learned,  and  that  is,  the  advantage  of  going  slowly? 
I  think  that  the  student  of  England's  work  in  the 
East  and  one  who  has  known  for  generations  of  how 
that  work  has  been  done,  realizes  that  every  mistake 
the  English  committed  in  the  East  was  committed 
because  there  had  not  been  carefully  appraised 
knowledge  of  conditions  before  changes  were  at- 
tempted. The  English  people  do  not  yet  know, 
after  very  nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  connec- 
tion as  administrators  of  India,  for  over  one  hundred 
and  forty  years,  do  not  know  the  conditions  accur- 
ately of  the  peoples  of  India,  although  they  have  had 
men  of  science  as  administrators  generations  after 
generations,  although  the  official  publications  on 
India  run  into  the  thousands.  The  people  who  are 
administering  the  government  of  India  do  not  yet 
know  the  actual  conditions  in  India.  Do  the  people 
of  the  United  States  thoroughly  understand  the 
geography,  the  conditions,  the  manners  and  customs, 
the  religion  and  so  on  of  the  people  of  the  Philippine 
Islands  ?  If  they  do,  why,  then  they  can  attempt 
bolder  experiments  than  people  can  attempt  in  India; 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  329 

but  if  they  do,  they  have  managed  in  about  three 
years,  through  expert  agents  whose  names  I  do  not 
happen  yet  to  have  heard,  to  have  acquired  a  more 
perfect  knowledge  than  has  been  acquired  in  150 
years  of  experience  in  India. 

I  do  not  wish  to  speak  sarcastically,  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact  it  does  seem  perfectly  startling  to 
one  whose  business  has  been  to  study  English 
administration,  to  see  the — ^what  may  I  call  it? — 
the  cock-sureness  of  the  methods  that  have  been 
applied  to  government  in  the  Philippine  Islands. 
I  would  not  for  one  moment  attempt  to  criticize 
those  things  in  detail,  but  I  merely  gasp  at  the  swift- 
ness with  which  the  knowledge  has  been  obtained  on 
which,  for  instance,  the  present  educational  crusade 
is  based.  It  may  be  that  that  educational  crusade 
is  going  to  be  entirely  successful;  it  may  be  that  the 
sending  out  of  these  thousands  of  teachers  there,  the 
building  up  of  these  little  red  school-houses  in  the 
Philippine  Islands,  and  especially  the  employment  of 
the  female  school  teacher,  contrary  to  the  usual  ideas 
of  Asiatics,  may  turn  out  to  be  entirely  successful. 
It  may  be  that  a  generation  will  see  the  Filipinos, 
as  has  been  argued,  well-balanced  American  citizens, 
with  a  knowledge  of  their  political  duties  and  rights 
and  a  thorough  understanding  of  the  law  to  be  ad- 
ministered among  them.  The  United  States  has 
done  so  many  great  things  that  no  European  who 
ever  comes  to  this  country  can  say  that  anything  to 
the  United  States  is  impossible.     But  it  does  seem 


330  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

very  improbable — I  think  one  may  go  as  far  as  that; 
it  does  seem  very  improbable.  The  educational 
crusade  in  the  Philippine  Islands  is  one  of  the  most 
extraordinary  things  that  this  generation  has  ever 
witnessed.  The  only  thing  like  it  at  all  v^as  in  the  old 
days  when  the  Portuguese  first  went  to  India  and 
when  they  sent  an  equal  number  of  missionaries  and 
soldiers  on  every  ship  that  they  sent  to  India,  with 
the  idea  of  converting  the  people  as  swiftly  by  the 
missionaries  as  they  killed  off  the  other  people  with 
the  soldiers.  The  only  thing  that  ever  approached 
it  has  been  this  wonderful  educational  crusade.  Why, 
when  I  read  that  wonderful  Hst  by  Mr.  Atkinson, 
stating — I  forget  the  number,  I  think  it  was  two  mil- 
lion pens,  half  a  million  black-boards  and  so  many 
million  spelling  books  and  readers  were  all  to  be  sent 
out  at  once  and  when  I  realized  that  all  these  most 
excellent  young  men  and  women — I  had  the  pleasure 
in  San  Francisco  of  seeing  six  hundred  of  them  start 
on  a  transport  for  Manila, — going  out  without  the 
slightest  hesitation  on  this  magnificent  educational 
crusade  of  theirs, — I  was  astonished  and  wondered 
whether  the  United  States  was  going  to  make  a  new 
record,  whether  it  was  going  to  turn  Asiatics  into 
Americans  by  means  of  the  little  red  school-house. 
It  may.  I  sincerely  hope  "it  may,'*  but  you  will 
permit  one  who  has  paid  some  attention  to  these 
problems  to  feel  just  a  little  sceptical.  I  remember 
once  having  to  read  in  my  official  capacity  two  great 
volumes  called  the  Indian  Educational  Report,  pub- 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  33I 

lished  in  1886.  In  these  two  great  blue  books  were 
summed  up  the  whole  history  of  the  efforts  made  to 
educate  the  people  of  India.  Different  theories  were 
discussed;  the  sending  of  primary  teachers,  the  at- 
tempt to  use  women  as  teachers  (that  I  am  sorry  to 
say  was  entirely  condemned  so  far  as  Hindoo  practice 
went);  the  various  schemes  of  sending  large  numbers 
of  Hindoos  over  to  England  where  their  Babu  lan- 
guage might  be  corrected  by  living  in  a  country  in 
which  they  would  find  the  language  spoken,  and 
various  measures  that  had  been  tried.  But  it  seems 
that  the  superintendent  in  the  Philippine  islands — a 
gentleman,  I  believe,  of  much  zeal  and  much  vigor — 
has  not  thought  of  those  things,  but  has  immediately 
applied  American  principles  to  the  Philippine  Islands. 
Perhaps  he  had  been  witness  of  that  absorption  of 
the  immigrant  which  is  so  remarkable  in  this  country; 
the  Polander,  or  whoever  he  may  be,  comes  over  and 
is  sent  to  the  American  primary  school  and  becomes  a 
good  American  in,  I  think  it  is  four  years;  and  how 
successful  that  is.  But  he  forgets  a  little,  that  in 
this  instance  the  little  new  citizen,  when  he  goes  on 
his  way  to  school  and  his  way  from  it,  is  hearing  the 
English  language  all  the  time  and  he  gets  the  connota- 
tion of  the  English  language  all  the  time;  that  the 
newspapers  that  are  sold  in  the  streets  and  that  he 
very  often  tries  to  sell,  are  printed  in  the  English 
langauge;  and  that  therefore  there  are  circumstances 
that  help  him  in  the  acquirement  of  the  alien  tongue. 
Those  things  won't  exist  in  the  back  country  of  the 


332  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Philippine  Islands,  I  think.  And  the  difficulty,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  enormous,  and  I  should  say  that  one 
of  the  points  that  a  student  of  the  history  of  the  Eng- 
lish administration  in  Asia  feels  that  perhaps  he  has  a 
little  right  to  deal  with,  is  to  try  and  warn  such  Amer- 
icans as  he  may  have  the  honor  to  speak  to,  not  to 
expect  too  rapid  success  from  the  educational  crusade 
and  to  be  very  exceedingly  proud  if  the  educational 
crusade  comes  off  in  even  the  smallest  degree.  I 
hope  that  it  may. 

It  is  then  with  such  points  as  these,  it  seems,  that  it 
might  be  possible  to  have  learned  something  from 
English  experience,  not  with  the  idea  of  imitation, 
because  I  do  not  believe  in  that;  but  with  the  idea  of 
seeing  what  has  been  done  and  has  failed  and  with  the 
idea  of  getting  into  the  difficulties  of  the  spirit  in- 
volved in  trying  to  change  the  character  of  a  whole 
people  from  Asiatic  to  European.  It  is  not  an  easy 
thing  to  do.  Even  those  Asiatics  who  have  come  and 
settled  in  this  country,  like  the  Chinese,  do  not  seem 
to  have  become  Americanized  very  quickly,  and  the 
difficulty  of  Americanizing  them  over  the  other  side 
of  the  Pacific,  in  the  Philippine  Islands,  seems  almost 
insurmountable.  I  could  not  help  thinking  the  other 
day,  as  I  was  reading  a  famous  essay  of  one  of  the 
greatest  of  all  English  thinkers,  an  essay  published 
as  far  back  as  1665,  when  I  read  that  essay  I  was 
greatly  struck  by  the  wisdom  of  that  great  English 
thinker,  when  he  remarks  "It  is  a  good  thing  to  bring 
over  from  the  plantations  some  of  the  savages  that 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  333 

they  may  see  the  methods  of  civilization  existing  in 
the  country,"  I  could  not  help  wondering  whether, 
instead  of  the  transport  load  of  teachers  to  the  Philip- 
pines it  might  not  have  been  wise  to  have  brought  a 
transport  full  of  Filipinos  to  the  United  States.  It 
would  have  been  cheaper.  And  again,  when  I  read 
that  remark  of  Bacon's  where  he  says  that  after  hav- 
ing made  a  foundation  you  should  not  harass  it  with 
customs  duties  but  allow  it  to  trade  freely  with  all  the 
world;  where  he  gives  that  splendid  piece  of  advice 
which  the  English  did  not  follow;  when  I  read  that 
sentiment  I  could  not  help  thinking  that  people  who 
lived  two  centuries  and  three-quarters  ago  had  looked 
into  some  of  these  famous  problems  to-day.  And  at 
last  in  that  famous  sentence  of  his  where  he  says  "It  is  a 
wicked  thing  indeed  to  desert  a  plantation  when  once 
founded"  it  seems  to  me  we  find  a  truth  applicable  to 
present  conditions.  We  should  recognize  the  fact 
that  the  civilization  we  have  found  has  been  possible; 
that  whether  or  not  the  American  people  have  taken 
unto  themselves,  that  whether  or  not  they  like  going 
to  the  Phihppine  Islands,  they  are  going  to  stay  there; 
and  that  behind  it  all  lies  that  great  moral,  "Make 
haste  slowly, — in  dealing  with  Asiatics,  particular 
slowly."  The  Asiatic  civilization  is  older  than  the 
European.  The  Asiatic  is  very  difficult  to  move;  it 
is  very  foolish  of  him  to  like  his  language  and  his  living 
and  his  associations  and  his  customs,  but  curiously 
enough  he  does,  and  he  likes  them  with  such  ob- 
stinacy that  you  are  not  going  to  change  him  very 


334  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

much  except  by  force, — just  like  a  Brahmin  prisoner 
in  a  European  jail  will  starve  to  death  sooner  than  to 
eat  food  prepared  by  a  prisoner  of  lower  caste.  So 
it  will  be  a  long,  long  time  before  many  of  the  Malay 
characteristics  can  be  extirpated  from  the  Malay 
mind,  from  the  Malay  soul.  Patience  is  the  one 
thing  that  I  think  one  learns  the  most  in  a  study  of 
EngHsh  administration  in  Asia.  Mr.  Kipling  puts 
this  in  four  lines  which  I  am  very  fond  of  citing  as  the 
concluding  words  in  such  a  talk  as  this  that  I  have 
given  before  you.  I  am  sure  that  I  am  very  much 
obliged  to  you  for  your  patience  in  listening  to  such 
a  disconnected  dissertation  and  possibly  a  little  quo- 
tation may  do  as  a  finish.  In  that  little  quotation, 
four  lines  written  at  the  head  of  one  of  the  chapters 
of  Kipling's  novel  "The  Naulauka,"  he  speaks  of  the 
Aryan  Brown  in  a  way  that  is  quite  as  applicable  to 
the  Malay  Yellow  or  the  Chinese  Yellow  or  anybody 
else,  and  there  is  a  fund  of  wisdom  put  into  it.  The 
lines  run  somehow  like  this  : 

"Now  it  is  not  good  for  the  Christian's  health  to  hustle  the 
Aryan  brown: 
[I  might  add  "the  Mongolian  yellow"] 
For  the  Christian  riles  and  the  Aryan  smiles  and  he  weareth 

the  Christian  down; 
And  the  end  of  the  fight  is  a  tombstone  white  with  the  name 

of  the  late  deceased; 
And  the  epitaph  drear:  *A  fool  lies  here  who  tried  to  hustle 
the  East.'" 

(Applause). 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  335 

Pursuant  to  the  custom  of  the  club  and  at  the  re- 
quest of  President  Sprague,  Professor  Stephens 
closed  the  discussion  as  follows: 

The  reason  I  accepted  your  invitation  to  say  a  word 
or  two  more,  Mr.  President,  was  that  I  might  have 
the  opportunity  of  echoing  every  word  that  Capt. 
Tilson  has  said  in  regard  to  the  United  States  troops. 
It  has  been  my  good  fortune  to  be  acquainted  enough 
with  the  old  army,  before  '98,  and  I  have  seen  some- 
thing of  the  new  army  since  that  time.  I  believe, 
from  my  soul,  that  every  single  word  that  the  Cap- 
tain has  said  is  absolutely  and  entirely  true.  My 
knowledge  of  the  United  States  soldier  shows  him  to 
be  the  most  adaptable  creature  on  earth  and  I  think 
the  United  States  soldier  can  be  very  satisfied  with 
being  regarded  as  maybe  a  little  slovenly  in  the  actual 
practice  of  the  goose-step  or  the  particular  wearing 
of  his  accoutrements  if  he  be,  as  I  firmly  believe  him 
to  be,  all  that  you  have  represented.  And  it  is  for 
that  reason  that  I  rise,  except  that  I  would  like  to  say 
just  two  things.  One  little  thing  occurred  to  me  as 
the  Captain  was  speaking,  a  little  matter  of  Indian 
administration  that  I  was  going  to  speak  of.  When 
the  Punjab,  the  great  land  of  the  five  rivers,  in  which 
dwell  the  most  stalwart  people  of  India,  was  annexed 
in  1849,  ^^  was  resolved  to  hand  over  its  government 
to  the  soldiers;  that  is  to  say,  those  officers  of  the 
army  in  India  who  had  shown  themselves  most  fitted 
to  understand  the  nature  of  the  people  who  had 
fought,  were  the  men  who  were  appointed  commis- 


336  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

sioners  and  deputy  commissioners  and  were  sent 
forth.  The  name  of  Sir  Henry  Lawrence  does  not 
suggest  to  the  American  people  as  it  does  to  EngHsh 
people,  or  the  name  of  Sir  John  Lawrence  either,  the 
ideal  of  almost  perfect  and  sympathetic  administra- 
tion. Sir  Henry  was  a  soldier  and  the  men 
who  fought  under  him  for  the  administration  of 
the  Sikhs  men — like  Herbert  Edwards  and  Rey- 
nold Taylor  and  James  Abbott  and  others — were 
officers  from  the  English  army,  detailed  from 
their  military  duties  and  given  absolute  control  over 
these  military  Sikhs.  So  well  did  they  do  their 
work,  so  well  did  they  understand  the  people  whom 
they  governed,  ready  indeed  to  draw  the  sword  if  it 
were  necessary,  that  they  became  such  ideal  admin- 
istrators that  when  the  shock  of  1857  came,  the 
truest  people,  on  the  whole,  to  the  English  cause,  the 
men  who  came  down  in  their  thousands  under  John 
Nicholson,  a  name  still  to  conjure  by  in  the  frontier 
of  India,  the  name  of  the  old  stalwart  still  worshiped 
in  India; — these  were  the  men  who,  under  eight  years 
of  administration  by  sympathetic  soldiers,  were  won 
over  to  the  ideas  of  English  government  and  who 
fought  out  bitterly  the  struggle  against  the  Bengal 
Army.  I  suppose  it  would  not  be  right  to  suggest 
that  there  might  even  possibly  be  a  lesson  there.  But 
is  it  not,  even  distantly  possibly,  that  it  might  be 
possible  to  find  among  the  officers  of  the  United  States 
Army,  men  with  the  sympathetic  knowledge  to  make 
them  perhaps  more  admirable  governors  of  Filipino 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  837 

provinces  than  even  the  best  chosen  and  best  selected 
of  political  circles  ?  And  that  little  remark  should 
be  supplemented  by  the  only  other  thing  I  had  to  say. 
Capt.  Tillotson  "roasted"  me  a  little  about  "the 
little  red  school-house"  and  so  on,  but  he  v^ill  do  me 
the  justice  to  say  that  I  never  said  the  scheme  was 
impossible  but  only  very,  very,  very  improbable. 
(Laughter).  The  American  nation  is  a  record- 
breaker;  I  am  perfectly  ready  to  admit  it;  but  it  has 
got  to  break  a  tremendous  lot  of  records  with  those 
Filipinos.  It  has  got  to  break  the  different  attitude 
towards  women  in  Asia  from  that  which  exists  else- 
where. The  woman  teacher,  who  is  so  marked  a 
feature  of  the  American  civilization,  is  something  al- 
most startlingly  foreign  to  Asiatic  ideas.  The  woman 
as  a  teacher  does  not  really  come  into  the  scheme  of 
Asiatic  life.  It  may  be  that  the  sympathetic  and 
tender  valor  of  the  American  soldier  may  so  impress 
the  Filipino  that  the  American  schoolma'am  may  be 
accepted  and  may  become  an  ideally  successful 
teacher.  But  as  I  say,  it  will  break  a  very  big  record 
indeed,  a  record  I  think  of  some  thousands  of  years. 
But  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not.  The  United 
States  has  broken  the  records  of  a  good  many  thou- 
sands of  years  and  may  break  it  again.  I  am  sure  that 
I  hope  it  will.  But  my  point  in  speaking  was  not  to 
ridicule  the  idea  of  "the  little  red  school-house"  so 
much  as  to  point  out  the  very  great  improbability  of 
its  success,  so  that  if  successful,  we — and  I  think  I 
may  count  myself,  for  this  purpose,  as  an  American, 

22 


338  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

2L  teacher  in  an  American  university — we  shall  all 
be  proud  of  the  success  if  attained.  But  is  it  not  wise 
also  to  be  prepared  with  a  knowledge  of  the  fact  that 
if  it  fails  after  all,  it  was  an  attempt  to  break  a  tre- 
mendously big  record  ?     (Applause.) 

Also  one  little  word  which  I  think  I  did  not  dwell 
enough  upon;  it  was  suggested  by  something  Capt. 
Tilson  said,  I  suppose  hardly  a  popular  thing  to  re- 
mark, that  if  the  United  States  does  manage  to  bring 
about  a  record  in  civilizing  the  Filipinos,  it  will 
largely  owe  that  possibility  of  breaking  that  record 
to  their  predecessors,  the  Spaniards.  After  all,  it  was 
the  Spaniards  that  made  these  Filipinos  the  religious 
people  they  are,  and  it  was  the  Spaniards  who  have 
managed  to  impose  in  Manila  and  in  some  of  the 
bigger  cities  a  certain  varnish,  I  believe,  of  Spanish 
ideas  and  civilization;  Filipinos  have  written  books  in 
Spanish;  and  it  may  be  that  that  stage  of  Spanish 
control  of  the  Filipinos  may  make  it  a  Httle  easier  for 
another  form  of  civilization  to  plant  itself  more 
quickly  than  in  India  where  all  the  foreign  domina- 
tion before  the  English  had  been  that  of  Mongolians, 
like  the  Moguls,  and  not  of  European-speaking  peo- 
ples. 

Those,  I  think,  sir,  are  the  only  remarks  that  occur 
to  me.  Most  certainly  in  my  heart  I  believe  that  in 
this  experiment  the  United  States  is  going  to  take  as 
an  Asiatic  power,  it  may  be  successful.  One  thing  I 
know  well;  that  is,  that  if  any  people  in  this  world  will 
rejoice  at  the  success  of  breaking  records,  it  will  be  the 


ENGLISH  ADMINISTRATION  IN  ASIA  339 

English  people.  After  all  that  is  said  and  done,  with 
all  their  sense — and  John  Bull  is  a  pretty  arrogant 
sort  of  person;  I  have  often  heard  it  said  that  other 
peoples  are  perhaps  very  nearly  as  arrogant,  but  at 
any  rate  not  quite;  he  is  a  pretty  arrogant  sort  of 
person,  but  he  does  recognize  good  work — I  can 
assure  you  that  if  the  United  States  manages  to  solve 
the  Filipino  problem  through  little  red  school-houses, 
that  I  shall  expect  to  see  little  red  school-houses 
scattered  from  Calcutta  to  Cape  Comorin,  and  over 
the  whole  of  India  there  will  be  little  red  school 
houses  and  possibly  as  well,  that  great  production  of 
American  civilization,  the  American  schoolma'am 
teaching  within  them.     (Laughter  and  applause). 


Slitb  Dlnnet, 

Aarcb  27.  t0O2. 

THE   IDEAL  AND  THE  PRACTICABLE  IN  COLLEGE 
EDUCATION. 

PRESIDENT  ARTHUR  T.  HADLEY, 
OP   YALE  UNIVERSITY. 

I  thank  you  most  heartily  for  the  welcome  given. 
In  one  sense  I  hardly  feel  as  if  I  needed  an  intro- 
duction here,  for  I  am,  partly  at  least,  a  Buffalo  boy. 
Long  years  ago — I  imagine  before  the  majority  of  you 
were  citizens  of  Buffalo — my  grandfather  and  my  uncle 
lived  here;  my  uncle  was  a  professor  in  the  Medical 
College;  and  one  of  the  pleasantest  remembrances 
of  my  boyhood  is  the  annually  recurring  visits 
to  this  city.  I  hardly  know  it  now;  your  President's 
comparison  of  "The  Deserted  Village"  seems  to  me 
singularly  inappropriate.  Every  time  I  come  here 
the  frontiers  of  Buffalo  move  out  a  mile  or  two 
farther  into  the  country;  every  time  I  come  here  the 
bank  of  my  friend,  Mr.  Clement,  has  doubled  its 
capital  stock,  (laughter)  and  altogether  the  diffi- 
culty is  in  recognizing  anything  that  is  growing  so 
rapidly.  But  I  am  always  pleased  to  have  the  op- 
portunity of  renewing  the  Buffalo  acquaintance,  even 
when  it  involves  making  a  speech. 

The  subject,  "The  Ideal  and  the  Practicable  in 
College  Education,"  I  propose  to  take  up  in  this 


COLLEGE  EDUCATION  341 

way:  to  show  what  are  some  of  the  different  concep- 
tions of  college  work  which  prevail;  to  show  the  diffi- 
culties involved  in  carrying  out  any  of  these  theories, 
and  to  see,  if  we  clan,  what  combination  or  compro- 
mise among  these  theories  will  enable  our  colleges 
to  do  the  best  service  to  the  world  of  education  and 
to  the  larger  world  of  public  life  and  commercial 
organization. 

Fifty  years  ago  it  was  pretty  well  understood  what 
a  college  was.  A  man  knew  what  he  went  for  and  he 
knew  what  he  got.  It  might  be  good  or  bad,  but  it 
was  a  definite  and  tangible  conception.  The  college 
was  the  natural  way  of  preparation  for  one  of  the 
learned  professions.  There  were  certain  professions 
set  apart  from  other  spheres  of  life  by  that  distinctive 
name.  Prior  to  entrance  into  these  professions,  a 
man,  if  he  was  ambitious,  spent  four  years  in  the  pur- 
suit of  a  course  of  study  which  was  accepted  as  a 
factor  inherited  from  the  past.  It  had  its  merits  or 
it  would  not  have  stood  so  long.  But  the  reason  a 
man  took  that  course  was  not  because  he  wanted  the 
Latin  and  Greek  and  mathematics  which  it  gave,  but 
because  that  was  the  respectable  thing  to  do;  he  took 
the  course  as  he  wore  clothes  of  the  regulation  cut; 
he  would  no  more  have  deviated  from  that  course 
than  he  would  have  appeared  on  Main  Street  wearing 
kilts.  It  was  not  the  convenience  of  the  clothes,  but 
the  fashion  that  dictated  it.  Of  course  it  was  not 
confined  to  the  learned  professions;  a  great  many  men 
went  to  college  and  went  to  business  afterwards,  but 


34,2  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

they  took  the  college  course  with  a  view  of  getting 
the  social  stamp  of  an  educated  man;  a  sort  of 
medallion  to  put  on  themselves  to  indicate  that  they 
belonged  to  a  certain  class  of  training.  But,  as  the 
country  advanced,  the  social  distinctions  were  en- 
tirely broken  down.  People  ceased  to  think  of  the 
learned  professions  as  anything  separate  or  different 
from  the  work  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  There  arose 
other  callings  requiring  equally  long  and  difficult 
training.  The  work  of  the  engineer,  in  its  various 
branches,  the  work  of  the  artist,  the  work  of  the 
architect,  all  claimed  a  large  amount  of  technical 
training.  This  broke  down  the  line  of  distinction 
between  the  old-fashioned  professional  man  and  the 
rest  of  the  community  and  it  opened  the  question 
how  the  men  who  went  into  these  callings  should  be 
fitted  for  their  subsequent  life.  In  other  words, 
instead  of  classes  in  education,  sharply  marked  off 
one  from  another,  we  had  a  gradation,  from  the 
physician  who  took  so  long  in  his  training  that  he 
might  be  thirty  years  of  age  before  he  went  into  prac- 
tice, down  to  the  man  who  went  out  of  the  primary 
school  into  the  trade  school  to  shorten  his  period  of 
apprenticeship,  and  you  could  not  say  where  the  line 
of  the  techincally  trained  man  ended  and  the  un- 
technically  trained  man  began. 

Now,  this  is  the  condition  that  we  are  in  at  the 
present  day.  We  understand  what  we  mean  when 
we  speak  of  primary  education — a  certain  general 
training,  common-school  training  that    is  needed  for 


COLLEGE  EDUCATION  343 

the  whole  of  society.  We  understand  what  we  mean 
by  techincal  training, — training  in  medicine  or  theol- 
ogy or  law  or  engineering  or  in  the  various  branches 
of  trade  and  industry, — but  between  the  two  there  is 
a  secondary  training,  in  our  high  schools  and  in  our 
colleges,  of  which  we  do  not  understand  at  the  pres- 
ent day  either  the  limits  or  the  purpose.  The  reason 
for  existence  of  the  college  is  to-day — the  practical 
reason  for  existence — amounts  to  this;  into  some  of  the 
professions  and  callings  men  are  expected  to  go  as 
soon  as  they  leave  the  common  school,  into  others  they 
are  not  expected  to  go  until  they  are  sixteen  of  twenty 
or  twenty-four  or  twenty-eight  years  of  age;  medicine 
being  probably  the  one  where  the  period  of  training 
lasts  longest.  Now,  that  makes  a  sort  of  an  inter- 
mediate stage  of  varying  length,  very  short  for  some, 
a  year  or  two  of  a  high  school  course,  longer  for 
others,  four  or  five  years,  still  longer  for  those  who 
have  the  time  and  money  to  take  an  academy  course 
and  superadd  a  college  course  onto  it.  What  are  you 
to  do  with  this  secondary  period  of  training  inter- 
mediate between  the  primary  school,  which  ends  at  a 
definite  time,  and  the  technical  school,  which  begins 
at  a  varying  or  shifting,  sliding-scale  of  age, — ^what 
are  you  to  do  in  this  strife  ?  Now,  you  can  not  fill  it 
solely  and  simply  with  the  old  classical  curriculum 
that  we  had  fifty  years  ago.  There  are  too  many  men 
going  into  the  secondary  education  who  are  not 
bound  by  traditions,  who  do  not  feel  the  imports  of 
these  traditions.     You  must  fill  it  in  some  way  more 


344  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

consonant  to  the  demands  of  modern  life.  But  how 
we  are  to  fill  this  varying  length  of  educational  stage, 
this  whole  sphere  of  secondary  education,  is  one  of 
those  problems  on  which  the  modern  world  is  not 
agreed,  and  one  on  which  it  is  very  unsafe  to  dog- 
matize. There  are  two  subjects  on  which  general 
principles  are  most  unwise  to  utter:  education  and 
religion.  The  instant  you  get  a  general  principle 
stated,  you  will  find  somebody  or  some  individual 
that  will  upset  it  entirely. 

I  think  in  dealing  with  these  matters  that  we  should 
always  use  the  caution  that  was  exercised  by  Arch- 
bishop Temple  not  long  ago  when  a  young  lady  from 
Boston  who  was  interested  in  the  work  of  the  Society 
of  Psychical  Research,  happening  to  sit  next  him  at 
dinner,  said  to  the  Archbishop,  "What  do  you  think 
of  special  providence?"  "Hum!"  said  the  Arch- 
bishop, "don't  know  what  you  mean."  "Well," 
she  said,  "I  can  perhaps  illustrate  what  I  mean  by 
this  story:  My  aunt  was  about  to  sail  for  America 
and  the  night  before  sailing  she  dreamed  that  the 
steamship  on  which  she  had  engaged  passage  was  run 
into  in  mid-ocean  and  sunk,  with  great  loss  of  life, 
and  her  dream  was  so  vivid  that  she  cancelled  her 
passage,  paid  the  forfeit,  went  home  on  another 
steamer,  and,  sure  enough,  the  steamship  on  which 
she  had  originally  engaged  passage  was  thus  run  into 
in  mid-ocean  and  sunk  with  much  loss  of  life.  Now, 
do  you  believe  that  was  special  providence  .?  "Can't 
\  say;  never  knew  your  aunt."     (Laughter.) 


COLLEGE  EDUCATION  345 

Now,  it  is  unsafe  to  dare  to  tell  how  "your  aunt" 
should  be  educated  until  you  know  the  individual 
in  question.  But  speaking  broadly  and  without 
any  intention  of  dogmatism,  I  think  we  may  divide 
people's  ideas  of  college  courses  at  the  present  day 
into  three  distinct  groups.  The  first  group  would 
fill  this  period  of  secondary  training  in  the  place  of  an 
old  classical  course,  with  encyclopaedic  knowledge; 
the  second  would  push  down  the  period  of  technical 
training  into  the  period  of  secondary  education  and 
make  the  college  a  kind  of  preliminary  technical 
school,  shortening  at  the  same  time  the  college 
course;  and  the  third  would  use  the  college  simply  as 
a  means  of  general  culture,  just  as  they  might  send  a 
boy  to  college,  as  they  might  send  him  to  travel  in 
Europe,  believing  that  by  going  to  Europe  he  will  get 
quite  as  much  as  he  would  in  going  to  college  and  be 
subjected  to  less  temptations  in  the  one  case  than  in 
the  other.  I  propose  to  criticise  these  three  types  of 
the  use  of  the  college  course.  Now,  first,  if  the  en- 
cyclopaedic idea  of  a  college  course,  that  this  long 
period  of  secondary  education  should  be  used  to  give 
a  man  a  little  of  all  the  kinds  of  knowledge  which  the 
modern  world  needs;  that  is  a  plausible  theory.  Here 
is  a  man  who  leaves  the  primary  school  at  twelve 
or  thirteen  years  of  age;  he  is  not  going  to  begin  his 
technical  education,  until  he  is  twenty-one  or  twenty- 
two.  What  better  use  for  the  intermediate  nine 
years,  than  to  give  him  that  conspectus  of  the  field 
of  human  knowledge  which  he  will  never  get  after- 


346  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

ward,  which  he  will  never  have  the  time  to  get  after- 
ward with  equal  facility  ?  Many  a  man  who  objects 
to  a  classical  education  says  Latin  and  Greek  take  a 
large  share  of  the  time  which  might  be  spent  in  ac- 
quiring knowledge  of  things  modern  which  are  going 
to  be  really  of  use;  knowledge  of  English  and  French 
and  German;  knowledge  of  the  practical  applications 
of  mathematics;  knowledge  of  descriptive  science  in  all 
its  various  ways.  Many  would  have  the  preparatory 
course  formed  by  a  typical  high-school  course  of  the 
present  day;  they  would  have  the  years  of  college  life 
a  continuation  of  a  wide  range  of  studies  of  the  same 
kind.  Now,  the  chief  difficulty  with  our  view  of 
secondary  education  is  that  it  does  not  work  very 
well;  that  the  boy  who  attempts  to  work  over  a  large 
range  of  topics,  passing  from  one  thing  to  another,  is 

V  training  the  least  valuable  of  his  mental  powers,  the 
habit  of  acquisition.  He  acquires  one  set  of  things 
the  first  year,  another  the  second.     If  he  is  a  healthy 

\  boy,  during  the  second  year  he  forgets  the  things  that 
he  learned  in  the  first  year.  Why,  to  take  things 
from  your  own  work,  those  of  you  who  are  lawyers,  or 
business  men  either,  can  see  how  fatal  it  would  be 
in  a  case  that  you  are  having  this  month  if  you  were 
bothered  with  remembering  all  the  details  of  a  case 

V  that  you  had  last  month  or  a  year  ago.  The  healthy 
man  needs  to  forget.  His  brain  is  not  a  store-house 
to  be  filled  full  of  useless  lumber.  If  it  were  he 
never  could  find  any  piece  of  goods  that  he  wanted. 
What  would  you  think  of  a  merchant  who  is  accumu- 


COLLEGE  EDUCATION  347 

lating  side  by  side  on  his  shelves,  goods  of  ten  years 
past,  in  the  manufacture,  in  the  hope  that  in  the  long 
cycle  the  fashions  will  come  around  where  the  goods 
of  ten  years  ago  should  suddenly  become  salable? 
You  would  say  he  was  working  on  a  wholly  wrong 
principle.  And  yet  the  people  who  make  acquisi- 
tion the  main  idea  of  education  are  working  on  this 
same  principle.  They  are  attempting  to  cram  the 
boy  with  things  that  will  be  of  use.  Fortunately 
the  boy  will  not  cram.  The  human  brain  is  wiser 
than  the  theories  of  these  educators;  it  rejects  the 
things  of  the  earlier  years  before  you  come  to  the 
things  of  the  later  ones,  and  so  no  harm  is  done; 
but  also,  no  good  is  done.  I  think  it  will  be  found 
that  those  courses  of  study  which,  year  after  year, 
attempt  to  cram  the  pupil  with  knowledge  in  its 
various  details  and  in  as  wide  a  range  as  possible,  fail 
to  give  even  the  training  which  the  old-fashioned 
classical  course,  defective  as  it  was  in  many  ways, 
brought  into  the  mind  of  the  student. 

The  second  of  these  ideas  of  the  college  course  is 
that  it  should  be  a  preliminary  stage  of  the  technical 
school.  The  advocates  of  this  theory  complain  that 
in  medicine  especially — to  a  less  degree  in  law  and 
theology  and  many  other  professions — the  boy  is  so 
delayed  in  entrance  that  he  gets  to  be  twenty-five  or 
thirty  years  old  before  he  can  see,  even  with  a  tele- 
scope, a  remote  chance  of  being  even  self-supporting. 
They  therefore  urge  that  these  studies  be  carried 
down  earlier  into  the  work  of  education.     Let  the 


848  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

college  course  prepare  the  boy  in  the  general  studies 
of  which  his  professional  school  furnishes  the  more 
specific  details.  Some  of  them  would  combine  with 
this  a  shortening  of  the  college  course,  of  the  period 
of  secondary  education,  though  this  is  not  true  of  all. 
Now,  in  this  view  of  secondary  education  there  are 
certain  advantages.  It  is  unquestionably  true  that 
we  begin  our  professional  life  rather  late  at  the  present 
day;  that  we  perhaps  do  not  utilize  to  the  best  the 
forces  of  many  men  who  could  serve  the  people  three 
or  four  years  earlier  than  they  do  now.  But  when 
you  attempt  to  carry  it  out  as  a  theory  of  the  college 
course  you  have  several  dangers.  In  the  first  place 
many  a  boy  at  the  beginning  of  his  college  course  has 
no  idea  for  what  profession  he  is  fitted.  If  he  takes 
technical  training,  he  is  better  off  taking  it,  not 
definitely  as  a  preparation  for  his  professional  school 
work,  but  experimentally,  one  of  the  two  or  three 
lines  to  show  what  he  has  in  him  and  what  he  can  do. 
And  again,  those  boys  who  take  the  college  course  as 
a  preparation  to  technical  work,  do  not,  as  a  rule, 
thereby  hasten  their  entrance  into  professional  life 
very  appreciably,  for  if  you  spread  the  work  of  a 
medical  school  over  seven  or  eight  years  instead  of 
four,  if  you  spead  the  work  of  a  law  school  or  a  divinity 
school  over  a  corresponding  number  of  years,  you 
relegate  the  man  to  a  school  base  which  is  very  differ- 
ent from  what  he  will  be  called  upon  in  after  life,  and 
which  prevents  him  from  doing  much  more  actual 
preparation  in  seven  years  than  he  formerly  did  in 


COLLEGE  EDUCATION  349 

three  or  four.  It  is  an  interesting  thing  also  that 
although  our  colleges,  our  better  colleges,  many  of 
them  allow  a  boy  to  take  his  degree  in  three  years 
without  work  that  most  of  the  men  in  this  room 
would  consider  very  hard,  comparatively  few  stu- 
dents avail  themselves  of  the  privilege.  If  you  make 
a  new  course  only  two  years  long,  for  the  bachelor's 
degree,  you  will  find  men  who  will  be  glad  to  take  the 
bachelor's  degree  in  two  years,  but  if  you  say  the  old 
course  is  not  so  terribly  hard  but  that  if  you  really 
work  you  can  shorten  the  thing  to  three  years,  you 
will  not  find  a  large  number  that  carry  out  the  actual 
shortening.  There  is  in  the  college  life,  in  the  old 
fashioned  college  course,  a  certain  attraction  of  out- 
side interests  and  a  certain  demand  on  the  part  of 
parents  that  the  boy  should  go  into  it  not  for  the 
books  alone,  but  as  a  step  in  social  training,  that  the 
attempt  to  make  it  a  preliminary  of  the  professional 
school  has  thus  far  met  with  scant  success. 

The  third  of  these  theories  of  which  I  spoke,  the 
theory  that  would  liken  the  college  course  to  foreign 
travel,  recognizes  this  social  element  in  it.  The 
advocates  of  this  theory  say,  as  Cardinal  Newman, 
that  a  university  is  like  a  large  capital.  It  has  tra- 
ditions, it  has  stimuli  intellectual  and  relations  of  all 
kinds  which  make  the  men  who  come  under  its 
influence  broaden  and  feel  the  indefinable  and  un- 
changeable effects,  and  they  would  have  the  pupils 
left  free  to  feel  these  eflPects;  they  would  have  a  broad 
system  of  election  in  which  the  man  could  do  what 


y 


350  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

he  felt  to  be  to  his  taste,  in  which  he  would  not  be  so 
overburdened  with  work  which  would  prevent  him 
from  taking  his  part  in  athletics  and  society  and 
would  make  him  in  these  years  a  citizen  of  the  world, 
inspiring  and  widening  him  in  such  a  way  as  to  be 
able  to  resist  the  narrowing  tendencies  of  profes- 
sional and  commercial  life.  Now,  this  view  also  is 
attractive;  perhaps  it  has  more  basis  of  truth  than 
either  of  the  others,  but  when  you  come  to  leave  a 
boy  perfectly  free  thus  to  work  out  his  own  sweet  will 
you  get  too  often  not  inspiration,  but  dissipation.  He 
goes  to  college,  you  do  not  tell  him  what  he  is  going 
for,  he  never  finds  out.  He  is  like  the  unfortunate 
Mr.  Hyde  at  a  funeral.     You  know  the  rhyme: 

"There  was  a  young  fellow  named  Hyde, 
At  a  funeral  once  he  was  spied, 
\     When  asked  who  was  dead,  he  giggled  and  said, 
*I  dunno,  I  just  came  for  the  ride.'" 

(Laughter.) 

He  does  not  even  know  what  he  has  been  sent  to 
college  for.  He  takes  what  comes,  Micawber-like, 
and  just  about  as  much  comes  to  him  as  to  Mr. 
Micawber. 

Now,  can  we  find  among  these  different  ideas,  can 
we  find  any  conception  of  the  general  purposes  of  the 
colleges  which  shall  take  what  is  good  in  all  of  them, 
which  shall  avoid,  as  far  as  possible,  what  is  evil  in 
them,  and  which  we  may  be  able  in  our  efforts  at  col- 
lege reform  to  hold  in  sight  as  a  goal .?  I  think  we 
can,  and  though  I  do  not  not  believe  we  are  yet  in  a 


COLLEGE  EDUCATION  351 

position  narrowly  to  define  what  we  should  do  in  the 
future,  I  think  we  can  pretty  well  define  the  lines  on 
which  we  must  work. 

What  shall  we  take  as  from  the  conception  of  the 
man  whose  belief  is  that  the  college  should  furnish 
a  range  of  knowledge  which  shall  prepare  the  student 
for  the  various  things  that  may  array  him  as  an  edu- 
cated man  'mid  a  world  of  educated  men  ? 

I  think  we  may  take  this:  we  should  give  the  stu- 
dent not  acquisition  of  as  many  kinds  of  knowledge  as 
possible,  but  training  in  as  many  kinds  of  power  as 
possible;  that  we  should  teach  him  to  do  things;  not 
to  know  specific  facts,  but  to  handle  methods  in  such 
a  way  that  when  the  facts  are  wanted  he  can  get  them. 
I  spoke  a  few  moments  ago  of  the  truth  that  mere 
knowledge  is  speedily  forgotten,  but  training  of  hand 
and  brain,  training  in  the  methods  of  acquiring 
knowledge,  remains.  The  man  who  learns  the  con- 
tents of  a  book  containing  a  series  of  propositions  for- 
gets it;  the  man  who  learns  the  use  of  a  book  as  an 
instrument,  if  he  is  really  taught,  does  not  forget  it. 
One  book  that  you  have  learned  to  use  is  worth 
more  than  fifty  books  which  in  succession  you  have 
learned  by  heart.  That  was  the  stength  of  our  fore- 
fathers who  knew  no  book  but  the  Bible  and  in 
virtue  of  knowing  the  use  of  that  one  book  con- 
quered a  continent.  That  was  the  use  of  the  old 
classical  education.  A  man  who  has  had  more  ex- 
perience perhaps  than  any  one  man  in  the  country  in 
the  practical  operation  of  railroads  and  in  training 


352  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

men  for  positions,  the  man  who  was  the  founder  of 
the  Altoona  shopsof  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  and  is 
now  in  a  high  position  in  the  executive  of  the  road,  told 
me  that  he  would  rather  have  a  man  who  knew  how 
\  to  find  what  he  wanted  in  a  Latin  dictionary  quickly 
than  a  man  who  knew  half  the  propositions  in  all  the 
books  of  natural  science  in  the  world.  The  proposi- 
tions in  the  books  of  natural  science  will  change. 
The  habit  of  finding  what  you  want  in  any  place  will 
serve  you  instead  in  finding  something  new  which 
you  want  in  some  other  place.  That,  I  say,  was  the 
merit  of  the  classical  education,  that  it  taught  you 
the  use  of  a  thing.  Its  demerit  was  that  it  taught 
you  the  use  of  only  a  few  things.  We  shall  make  a 
step  backward  if  we  substitute  for  the  classical  train- 
ing a  cram  on  a  broad  variety  of  lines;  we  shall  make 
a  step  forward  if  we  can  substitute  for  it  a  similar 
training  on  a  larger  variety  of  lines.  How  we  can 
do  that  is  not  so  easy  to  tell.  This  is  one  of  those 
cases  where  it  is  easier  to  criticise  than  it  is  to  con- 
struct. But  I  believe  if  we  have  the  understanding 
of  the  fact  that  the  learning  of  English  is  not  the 
learning  of  the  facts  about  English  literature,  that  the 
learning  of  science  is  not  the  knowledge  of  individual 
propositions  in  the  science,  we  can  leave  learning  to 
the  educators  of  the  future,  by  their  developments  not 
merely  of  classical  training,  but  of  modern  training 
and  of  manual  training,  for  as  long  as  manual  training 
is  not  allowed  to  degenerate  into  shop-work,  but  be- 
comes laboratory  work,  as  long  as  the  pupil  values 


COLLEGE  EDUCATION  36t 

not  the  thing  that  he  does  but  the  accuracy  of  doing 
it,  we  have  in  this  a  most  hopeful  element  in  the 
secondary  education  of  the  future.  "More  kinds  of 
power"  must  be  our  watchword  if  we  are  to  resist  the 
demand,  the  ill-judged  demand,  for  more  kinds  of 
knowledge. 

And  what  of  the  second  demand,  the  demand  for 
earlier  technical  training  ? 

The  answer  to  this  I  have  already  foreshadowed. 
I  do  not  believe  that  the  college  can  advantageously 
be  a  vestibule  for  the  professional  school,  but  I  be- 
lieve that  it  can,  most  advantageously,  under  the 
operation  of  the  elective  system,  be  a  means  by 
which  the  student  shall  find  what  profession  and 
what  technical  school  he  is  fitted  for. 

We  have  among  our  students  three  or  four  distinct 
classes  of  temperament.  We  have  the  man  of  ob- 
servation, who  is  interested  in  science,  from  whom 
is  made  the  engineer  or  the  physician,  according  as 
he  is  or  is  not  competent  to  handle  mathematics, 
according  as  his  balance  of  interest  lies  on  one  side  or 
the  other.  We  have  the  logical  man,  the  man  of 
books  and  ideas,  who  is  interested  in  the  communi- 
cation of  propositions,  who  is  fitted  to  be  a  teacher, 
who  is  fitted  for  one  large  side  of  the  work  of  the 
lawyer,  the  journalist  or  the  minister.  And  we  have 
the  man  of  affairs,  who  is  fitted  to  be  a  man  of  business 
or  a  politician  and  who  also  can  go  into  the  work  of 
the  lawyer,  the  journalist  or  the  engineer  from  an- 
other side. 

23 


364  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

There  is  a  fourth  temperament  besides  this, — the 
artistic  temperament,  but  this  temperament  is  so 
rare  and  the  chance  of  making  a  mistake  and  thinking 
^  you  have  it  when  you  are  only  lazy  is  so  great  (laughter) 
that  it  is,  on  the  whole,  wise  to  encourage  the  student 
who  has  the  artistic  temperament  to  beHeve  that  he 
has  the  scientific  temperament  until  he  has  shown 
unmistakably  that  he  belongs  to  the  class  of  geniuses. 

Now,  I  regard  the  elective  system,  when  rightly 
applied  and  wisely  used,  as  an  invaluable  feature, 
and,  by  the  way,  I  may  say  that  with  the  students  in 
our  colleges,  earnest  as  they  are,  there  is  a  readiness 
to  take  advice  about  the  elective  system  and  to  use  it 
rightly,  not  for  "soft  snaps"  and  easy  choices,  but 
for  an  actually  serious  preparation  for  future  work. 
That  makes  it  possible,  if  the  adviser  knows  what 
he  has  in  mind,  to  guide  the  student  to  a  right  use  of 
it;  it  is  possible,  under  the  elective  system  I  say,  for 
the  pupil  so  to  arrange  his  courses  on  different  lines 
that  he  shall  know  to  which  of  these  groups  his  tem- 
perament belongs  and  where  he  is  best  placed;  to 
teach  the  student  who  wants  to  be  a  minister  and 
ought  to  be  a  farmer,  or  to  teach  the  student  who 
expects  to  be  a  farmer  and  ought  to  be  a  minister,  in 
either  case,  the  error  of  his  judgment  while  he  is  yet 
within  the  stage  of  secondary  education,  and  can, 
without  much  loss,  revoke  his  mistakes,  rather  than 
to  have  him  learn  that  same  thing  after  he  has  com- 
pleted his  techincal  training  and  gone  out  into  the 
world,  married  and  has  three  or  four  children  and 


COLLEGE  EDUCATION  356 

can't  change  at  all.  This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the 
sphere  of  the  introduction  of  the  preliminary  tech- 
nical training  in  the  college  course,  to  show  the  stu- 
dent which  class  he  belongs  to  and  what  he  is  fitted 
for. 

And,  finally,  with  regard  to  the  analogy  of  the 
university  to  foreign  travel,  with  regard  to  that  con- 
ception which  would  make  it  teach  a  man  to  see 
things  larger  than  himself  and  to  get  into  general 
relations  to  society.  I  believe  that  in  the  college,  as 
distinct  from  the  technical  schools  of  the  university 
and  in  those  parts  of  the  technical  schools  which  are 
collegiate  rather  than  technical  in  their  work — for 
every  scientific  school  has  its  collegiate  as  well  as  its 
technical  part — I  believe  that  this  represents  the 
noblest  function  of  all.  But  it  is  not  to  be  performed 
by  letting  the  student  alone.  You  cannot  let  down 
the  bars  of  the  pasture  and  tell  the  student  to  go  in 
and  take  what  grass  best  suits  him  and  occasionally 
lift  his  head  up,  as  a  cow  might,  and  contemplate 
how  large  the  pasture  is.  Nothing  will  be  done  in 
that  way.  You  must  have  collective  influences  at 
work  in  the  college  that,  in  books  and  in  action  and  in 
society,  will  bring  the  student  outside  of  himself,  will 
educate  him  to  an  understanding  of  the  largeness  of 
the  world  in  which  he  lives,  will  lead  him  to  see  that 
the  importance  of  commerce  and  politics  is  not  what 
he  can  get  out  of  it  in  dollars  and  cents,  but  in  the 
size  of  the  world  which  he  can  move  and  in  the  in- 
fluence which  he  can  have  in  doing  for  others. 


-/ 


366  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

If  I  were  asked  what  among  the  many  services  of 
the  colleges  at  the  present  day  was  the  most  impor- 
tant, I  should  reply,  their  training  in  public  spirit  as 
distinct  from  the  spirit  of  individual  self-seeking. 
For  that  reason  we  may,  I  think,  deprecate  the  spirit 
of  reform  which  would  too  rapidly  introduce  utilitar- 
ian studies,  whose  interest  is  measured  by  the  demands 
of  the  present  day,  for  historical  studies  which  teach 
us  to  judge  the  movements  of  that  present  by  a  meas- 
ure larger  than  the  span  of  our  own  individual  life. 

In  the  whole  course,  as  it  appears  in  the  books,  the 
effort  should  be  to  use  literature  and  history  and 
science  not  as  a  means  of  making  money — that  will 
come  soon  enough  in  the  technical  education — but  as 
inspirations,  to  teach  the  student  that  money  is  not 
everything  Far  be  it  from  me  to  deprecate  these 
uses  of  money.  As  a  political  economist,  I  have  seen 
only  too  well  how  money  and  the  making  of  money  is 
one  of  the  most  powerful  levers  in  human  progress, 
perhaps  the  mightiest  means  ever  devised  for  making 
the  interest  of  the  individual  subserve  the  interest  of 
society.  But  let  us  not  teach  the  student  to  con- 
found the  means,  however  important,  with  the  end, 
or  to  believe  because  by  advancing  himself  he  ad- 
vances others,  that  therefore  others  were  created  in 
order  that  he  himself  might  be  advanced. 

And  in  all  this  usefulness  of  the  college  course,  the 
whole  social  organization  and  the  whole  athletic  or- 
ganization may  be  made  to  co-operate.  There  is 
hardly  a  tradition  in  any  healthy  and  well  ordered 


COLLEGE  EDUCATION  367 

place  of  education,  which  does  not  tend  to  lead  a 
man  outside  of  himself,  which  does  not  teach  him 
that  life  is  to  be  valued  from  what  he  puts  into  it  and 
does  for  others,  rather  than  from  what  he  gets  out  of 
others  to  appropriate  for  himself.  Historic  tradition, 
literary  ideal,  scientific  discovery,  athletic  achieve- 
ment on  the  ball-field  or  the  river,  social  organization 
and  social  life  of  the  student's  fellows,  can,  as  every- 
one who  has  had  the  fortune  to  know  inspiring  teach- 
ers and  inspiring  companionship,  be  made  to  sub- 
serve for  this  common  end  of  education  in  public 
spirit,  of  that  broad  education  which  shall  make  the 
members  of  our  community  fitted  to  be  citizens  of  a 
true  democracy  because  they  will  go  into  the  govern- 
ment of  that  democrary  not  as  a  gain,  out  of  which 
they  can  get  what  they  can,  but  as  a  trust  to  be  ad- 
ministered for  their  fellow-men  (applause). 


iffrst  Dinner, 

'november  18,  1902. 

THE  DUTIES  OF  THE  NEW  CENTURY. 

REV.  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE. 

President  Henry  W.  Sprague  spoke  as  follows: 
Our  Dear  and  Honored  Guest  has  undertaken  to 
speak  to  us  of  the  Duties  of  the  New  Century. 
That  is  a  great  topic  and  we  are  entitled  to  know 
what  manner  of  man  this  is  who  speaks  to  us  on 
such  an  important  and  far-reaching  theme.  That 
man  is  pretty  well  known  to  you  now,  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  but  I  want  to  read  to  you  some  words 
that  have  been  said  about  him  recently  on  a  very 
important  occasion.  These  are  the  words  of  Senator 
Hoar:  "If  I  try  to  say  all  that  is  in  my  heart  to- 
night I  do  not  know  where  to  begin.  If  I  try  to 
say  all  that  is  in  your  hearts  or  the  hearts  of  his 
countrymen,  I  do  not  know  where  to  leave  off. 
Yet  I  can  only  say  what  everybody  here  is  silently 
saying  to  himself.  When  one  of  your  kindred  or 
neighbors  comes  to  be  eighty  years  old,  after  a  useful 
and  honorable  life,  especially  if  he  be  still  in  the  vigor 
of  manly  strength,  his  eye  not  dimmed  nor  his  natural 
force  abated,  his  children  and  friends  like  to  gather 
at  his  dwelling  in  his  honor  and  tell  him  the  story  of 
their  gratitude  and  love.     They  do  not  care  about 


THE  DUTIES  OF  THE  NEW  CENTURY  359 

words.     It  is  enough  if  there  be  a  pressure  of  the  hand 
and  a  kindly  and  loving  glance  of  the  eye.     That  is  all 
we  can  do  now,  but  the  trouble  is  to  know  how  to  do 
it.     When  a  man's  friends  and  lovers  and  spiritual 
children  are  to  be  counted  by  the  million — I  suppose 
if  all  the  people  in  this  country,  and  indeed  in  all  the 
quarters  of  the  globe  who  would  Hke  to  tell  their  grati- 
tude to  Dr.  Hale  would  come  together  to  do  it,  Boston 
Common  would  not  hold  them.     I  have  never  known 
anybody  in  my  long  life  who  seemed  to  me  to   be 
joined  by  the  heartstrings  to  so  many  men  and  women 
wherever  he  goes,  as  Dr.  Hale.     Dr.  Hale  has  done 
a  good  many  things  in  his  own  matchless  fashion. 
He  would  have  left  a  remarkable  name  and  fame  be- 
hind him  if  he  had  been  nothing  but  a  student  and 
narrator  of  history  as  he  has  studied  and  told  it;  if  he 
had  been  nothing  but  a  writer  of  fiction,  the  author 
of  *The  Man  Without  a  Country,'  or  'Ten  Times 
One  is  Ten,'  or  *In  His  Name;'  if  he  had  done  noth- 
ing but  organize  the  lend-a-hand  clubs  now  founded 
in  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe;  if  he  had  been  noth- 
ing but  an  eloquent  Christian  preacher;  if  he  had 
been  nothing  but  a  beloved  pastor,  if  he  had  been  only 
a  voice  which  lifted  to  Heaven  in  prayer  the  souls  of 
great  congregations;  if  he  had  been  only  a  public- 
spirited  citizen,  active  and  powerful  in  every  good 
work  and  word  for  the  benefit  of  the  people;  if  he  had 
been  only  the  man  who  devised  the  plan  that  might 
have   saved   Texas   from   slavery   and    thereby   pre- 
vented the  Civil  War,  and  which  did  thereafter  save 


360  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Kansas;  if  he  had  been  only  remembered  as  the  spirit- 
ual friend  and  comforter  of  large  numbers  of  men  and 
women  who  were  desolate  and  stricken  by  poverty 
and  sorrow;  if  he  had  been  only  a  zealous  lover  of  his 
country,  comprehending,  as  closely  as  any  other  man 
has  comprehended,  the  true  spirit  of  the  American 
people; — if  he  had  been  any  one  of  these  things,  as  he 
has  been,  it  would  be  enough  to  satisfy  the  most  gen- 
erous aspiration  of  any  man,  enough  to  make  his  life 
worth  living  for  himself  and  his  race.  And  yet,  and 
yet,  I  do  not  exaggerate  one  particle  when  I  say  that 
Dr.  Hale  has  been  all  these  and  more.  (Applause.) 
This  prophet  is  honored  in  his  own  country.  There 
will  be  a  place  found  for  him  somewhere  in  the  house 
of  many  mansions.  I  do  not  know  what  will  be  the 
employment  of  our  dear  friend  in  the  world  whose 
messages  he  has  been  bringing  to  us  so  long;  but  I 
like  to  think  he  will  be  sent  on  some  errands  like  that 
of  the  presence  which  came  to  Ben  Adhem,  with  a 
great  awakening  light,  rich  and  like  a  lily  in  bloom, 
to  tell  him  that  the  name  of  him  who  loved  his  fellow- 
men  led  all  the  names  of  those  whom  the  love  of  God 
had  blessed."     (Applause.) 

This  then  is  the  character  of  the  man  who  is  to 
speak  to  us  to-night.  Nothing  can  be  added  to 
praise  like  this.  It  is  indeed  a  great  privilege  to 
hear  the  voice  of  prophecy  of  this  man  who  for  eighty 
years  lived  in  the  old  century,  lived  so  close  to  it,  was 
so  identified  with  all  the  great  movements,  all  the 
great  thought  and  all  the  great  aspirations  of  that 


THE  DUTIES  OF   THE  NEW  CENTURY  361 

century,  and  who  now,  with  youthful  feeling  and  en- 
thusiasm, with  freshness  of  spirit,  turns  his  face  for- 
ward and  not  backward,  to  the  coming  century,  and 
will  tell  us  to-night  what  will  be  its  hopes  and  ideals, 
what  will  be  its  purposes,  and  what  we  should  do  to 
aid  in  the  great  work  of  the  era  that  is  just  upon  us. 
Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  present  to  you  Dr.  Hale. 
(Applause.) 

Rev.  Edward  Everett  Hale  then  addressed  the  club 
as  follows: 

I  am  sure  all  of  you  will  understand  that  the  words 
which  have  just  been  read  are  the  exaggerated  words 
of  a  very,  very  dear  friend,  perhaps  my  dearest  friend, 
and  you  know  what  allowance  is  to  be  made  for  the 
exaggeration  of  tender  friendship.  It  is  perfectly 
true  that  my  memories  run  back  half  way  to  the 
period  when  the  Boston  school  boys  coasted  in  front 
of  the  headquarters  of  Gen.  Haldimand  and  when  he 
spoiled  their  coast  for  them.  I  heard  that  story 
told  by  one  of  the  survivors  of  the  delegation  that 
waited  upon  the  general.  You  may  take  me  as  a 
half-way  man,  half  way  between  George  III  and 
Theodore  Roosevelt.     (Laughter). 

I  should  like  to  say  a  word  before  I  launch  on  my 
subject,which  shall  show  in  a  little  way  what  a  century 
is  good  for.  In  1798 — I  think  that  was  the  year, 
there  was  a  young  French  gentleman  in  this  country 
on  his  travels.  His  father  had  had  his  head  cut  off 
and  he  was  here  so  that  his  head  need  not  be  cut  off. 
He  was  afterwards  known  as  King  Louis  Philippe, 


362  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

King  of  the  French,  of  whom  Sir  Robert  Peel  passed 
the  rather  half  way  eulogy  when  he  died.  Peel  said 
in  the  House  of  Commons  that  King  Louis  Philippe, 
who  had  just  died,  was  the  greatest  sovereign  who  ever 
sat  on  the  throne  of  France  since  the  fall  of  Napoleon. 
(Laughter.)  That  is  one  of  these  half  way  sort  of 
compliments  that  good  men  have  to  give  to  other 
ones.  This  young  Duke  of  Orleans — I  believed  they 
called  him  Duke  of  Orleans  over  here — he  came  out 
to  see  Niagara  and  as  he  rode  back  with  his  attendants, 
all  of  them  on  horseback — nobody  thought  of  going 
any  other  way — met  a  young  EngHshman,  and  these 
young  gentlemen,  somewhere  around  here  on  the 
prairies — he  had  his  troop,  two  or  three  horsemen, 
around  here  somewhere — some  one  stopped  him — 
says,  "You  are  going  to  the  Falls  .?"  He  said  he  was. 
"Well,"  said  he,  "  I  have  stopped  at  the  house  that 
there  is  there,  and  the  man  he  is  not  good-natured 
and  if  I  were  you  I  wouldn't  go  in  there,  I  would 
pitch  my  tent  outside.'*  And  the  Englishman 
thanked  him  and  said  he  would.  That  house,  Mr. 
President,  was  the  City  of  Buffalo.  Its  hospitalities 
were  not  so  well-known  then  as  they  are  now.  I  am 
afraid  if  they  had  had  to  furnish  this  bill  of  fare  they 
would  not  have  succeeded  very  well.  He  went  on, 
this  English  gentleman,  went  on,  and  came  up  to  the 
Falls  and  spent  a  day  and  night  there,  pitched  his 
tent  as  he  was  told  to  and  came  back  again,  and 
forty-three  years  after,  when  he  was  Lord  Ashburton, 
he  was  in  Washington  on  the  business  of  the  Ash- 


THE  DUTIES  OF  THE  NEW  CENTURY  363 

burton-Webster  Treaty:  my  father  was  one  of  Mr. 
Webster's  friends  who  was  there  to  advise  him  about 
the  boundary  Hne,  and  Lord  Ashburton  told  him  the 
story.  At  that  time  the  Falls  of  Niagara  repre- 
sented: the  Falls  of  Niagara  one,  Mr.  Thomas  Baring 
two,  and  the  three  men  that  took  care  of  his  horses, 
four,  five  and  six.  Just  a  hundred  years  after,  I  was 
at  the  Falls  of  Niagara  and  my  excellent  friend  Mr. 
Stillman,  whom  I  think  some  of  you  know,  a  most 
charming,  accomplished  engineer,  was  showing  me 
around.  It  turned  out  in  the  course  of  the  conversa- 
tion that  the  power  house  which  we  were  in  would 
work  just  as  well  if  nobody  was  there  as  if  anybody 
was  there;  that  the  six  men  who  were  in  it  were 
ornamental  sort  of  people  and  that  the  windows 
might  be  shut,  but  they  were  afraid  some  boy  might 
smash  a  window  and  a  cat  might  get  in  and  the  cat 
might  make  a  row;  so  there  were  six  men  detailed  to 
keep  the  power  house  running,  and  it  turned  out  that 
that  power  house  was  manufacturing — that  was  the 
little  one;  that  was  manufacturing  only  20,000  horse- 
power a  day  and  the  big  one  was  manufacturing  30,- 
000  horse-power  again,  and  Mr.  Baring's  horse  was 
one  horse  and  the  other  three  horses  picketed  outside 
were  four  horses,  and  they  would  have  struck  if  you 
had  expected  them  to  work  more  than  ten  hours  a 
day.  So  that  you  had  the  contrast,  I  had  the  con- 
trast, as  I  was  in  that  place,  of  the  difference  between 
four  men  and  four  horses  in  1798,  and  50,000  horse- 
power twenty-four  hours  a  day  in  1901.    Well  I  put  it 


364  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

in  my  pipe  and  I  smoked  it.  It  affected  me  a  good 
deal  and  I  began  looking  around  to  compare  the  man 
of  1901  against  the  man  of  1801.  Well,  you  take  this 
instance:  We  have  a  census  of  the  steam  engines  in 
the  United  States  in  1801.  There  were  five  steam 
engines  in  the  United  States  at  that  time,  and  the 
largest  of  them  had  not  the  pov^er  equal  to  the 
smallest  of  the  locomotives  which  we  have  been 
hearing  whistling  since  we  sat  here  to-night.  Some 
of  you  know  how  many  hundred  steam  engines  there 
are  within  half  a  mile  of  my  voice  to-night.  I  don't 
know.  Certainly  there  are  a  good  many  more  than 
five. 

So  that,  preaching  in  Washington  early  in  the  new 
century,  I  said — and  that  is  the  text  of  my  speech 
to-night — I  said  that  the  average  power  of  a  man 
in  Buffalo  say,  or  in  Washington  or  Philadelphia, 
or  in  any  decent  city  in  the  United  States,  the  aver- 
age power  which  that  man  controls,  which  the  average 
man  controls,  is  a  thousand  times  as  large  as  the 
power  of  the  man  a  hundred  years  before.  Everyone 
of  us  in  this  room,  is,  for  practical  purposes,  a  thou- 
sand times  as  strong  as  his  grandfather  or  his  grand- 
father's father  was.  I  said  that  in  a  sermon  pretty 
much  as  I  say  it  here.  I  had  the  great  good  fortune 
of  having  among  my  hearers  one  of  the  coming  men, 
if  he  has  not  come,  the  secretary  of  the  great  Com- 
mission which  is  at  work  at  Scranton  at  this  moment, 
Carroll  Wright, — if  anybody  knows  anything  about 
such  things  Carroll  Wright  does,  the  head  of  the  Labor 


THE  DUTIES  OF   THE  NEW  CENTURY  365 

Commission,  you  know,  and  studying  things  for 
years.  I  got  a  note  from  Wright  the  next  morning,  in 
which  he  said  "Was  that  a  rhetorical  phrase  of  yours 
when  you  said  a  thousand  men  ?  I  thought  you 
spoke  as  of  somebody  who  knew  about  it."  Well,  I 
said  in  reply  that  I  had  given  a  little  attention  to  it 
as  far  as  I  could,  and  I  named  for  him  six  instances.  I 
named  this  one  of  Mr.  Baring  and  Philippe  for  one, 
and  three  or  four  more,  five  or  six  more,  and  I  got  a 
nice  note  from  him — I  wish  I  had  it  here  now.  He 
said,  "Mr.  Hale,  I  have  submitted  your  note  to  the 
heads  of  departments  in  our  bureau.  They  are  all 
interested  in  the  calculation  and  I  am  instructed  to 
say  that  wherever  you  can,  you  may  say  that  the 
average  man  is  now  a  thousand  times  as  strong  as  he 
was  in  1801."  So  that  I  do  not  speak  as  a  person 
coming  over  here  from  Boston  to  talk  rhetoric  to 
you;  I  am  going  to  speak  on  the  text  of  the  Chief  of 
Labor,  the  man  that  knows  more  about  it  than  all  the 
rest  of  us  here  do  put  together,  and  he  says  that  I 
may  say  that  each  of  us  is  a  thousand  times  as  strong 
as  his  great  grandfather  was  in  1801. 

Now  what  are  you  going  to  do  ?  That  is  the  great 
question.  Here  we  are,  a  lot  of  giants  going  about 
with  these  deaf  and  dumb  people  behind  us  who  can 
only  scream  when  we  tell  them  to  scream  and  cannot 
scream  when  we  don't.  What  are  we  going  to  do 
with  them  ?  In  other  words  what  is  this  Twentieth 
Century  going  to  achieve  which  the  Nineteenth 
Century  has  not  achieved  ?    You  know  we  think  of 


366  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

you  here  as  half  Canadians,  we  speak  of  your  speech 
as  a  little  "Oh,  yaas"  and  that  you  get  a  little  bit  of 
the  British  accent.  So  that  I,  like  Dawson,  who 
was  the  head  of  The  American  Physicist  when  he 
died,  and  the  head  of  the  McGill  College  at  Montreal, 
I  heard  him  say  on  a  public  occasion,  when  he  was 
measuring  his  words,  I  heard  him  say,  "What  will 
the  future  say  of  us  who  are  closing  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  what  will  they  say  of  the  men  between  1875 
and  1900?"  And  then  Dawson  said,  and  he  knew, 
"  They  will  say, '  Who  were  these  creatures  who ,  having 
wrought  out  all  the  formulas,  having  got  to  the  bottom 
of  all  nature's  secrets,  who  understood  all  the  princi- 
ples involved  in  all  the  natural  laws,  stood  still  and 
were  afraid  to  use  them,  sat  upon  the  beach  and 
looked  at  the  ocean  and  didn't  dare  swim  in  ?'"  He 
said,  "Why,  these  creatures,  they  are  satisfied  with 
the  electric  telegraph,  they  are  satisfied  with  the  tele- 
phone, they  are  satisfied  with  the  steam  engine, 
they  are  satisfied  with  the  microphone;  they  are  not 
going  to  use  the  transcendent  powers  that  God  has 
given  them."  That  is  what  the  first  physicist  in 
America  said  over  to  me, — that  we  were  a  lot  of  dis- 
satisfied, timid,  cowardly  creatures  that  would  not 
use  the  power  that  God  Almighty  had  put  into  our 
hands. 

I  was  talking  with  George  Morrison  six  months  ago; 
he  is  the  king  of  the  British  engineers,  you  know,  first 
engineer  of  the  country  they  call  him.  Morrison  told 
me  that  when  a  steamship  sails  from  New  York  City 


THE  DUTIES  OF   THE  NEW  CENTURY  367 

on  Saturday  and  arrives  in  Liverpool  the  next  Friday 
she  develops  more  power  than  Cheops  had  at  hand  to 
build  the  Great  Pyramid.  When  I  was  a  boy — that 
isn't  long  ago — the  Great  Pyramid  was  called  one 
of  the  seven  wonders  of  the  world.  I  wrote  a  note 
to  Long  at  once.  He  was  Secretary  of  the  Navy  at 
the  time.  I  told  him  to  send  sixteen  cruisers  around 
into  Annapolis  Bay  and  tell  the  men  instead  of  holding 
the  deck,  to  occupy  six  days  in  building  sixteen  pyra- 
mids up  there  in  memory  of  the  Spanish  War. 
(Laughter.)  That  is  the  sort  of  power  we  are  hand- 
ling, and  I  have  undertaken  to-night — it  is  a  very 
small  contract — to  tell  you  what  we  ought  to  do  with 
it  in  these  thousand  years  that  are  before  us.  Mean- 
while God  Almighty  has  been  teaching  us  a  good 
many  things  which  the  people  in  1800  did  not  know. 
People  in  1800  really  thought  they  were  children  of 
the  devil;  they  thought  they  were  children  of  wrath; 
they  thought  nineteen  twentieths  of  them  were  going 
to  be  damned  in  everlasting  fire.  And  the  people  in 
1901  know  that  that  is  not  true.  They  know  that 
we  are  all  children  of  God,  that  we  are  at  work  with 
God  and  God  is  at  work  with  us.  They  begin  to 
know  what  the  phrase  "Children  of  God"  means — 
sharing  his  nature.  Now,  what  are  we  going  to  do 
with  it .?  We  are  going  to  do  five  things,  and  I  shall 
speak  of  each  of  them.  I  have  looked  at  my  watch 
and  have  asked  the  chairman  how  long  I  shall  speak 
and  I  shall  subdivide  it  into  segments  accordingly. 
We  are  going  to  do  five  things.     You  men  in  this 


368  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

room  will  have  to  take  the  working  oar  of  the  first 
and  Joe  Chamberlain  and  his  kit  will  have  to  take 
the  working  oar  of  the  second  and  the  heir  of  Cecil 
Rhodes,  whoever  he  is,  will  take  the  working  oar  of 
the  third;  but  the  first  is,  we  are  going  to  have  a 
four-track  railway  extending  from  Hudson's  Bay  to 
Magellan's  Straits,  of  the  best  possible  equipment. 
It  is  to  be  the  Pan-American  Railway,  and  you  gen- 
tlemen did  more  than  you  knew  you  did  towards  that 
when  you  founded  your  magnificent  Pan-American 
Exposition  here.  (Applause).  And  it  is  not  to  be 
built  for  private  profit;  private  profit  will  be  an  in- 
significant element  in  the  work  of  the  Twentieth 
Century.  "All  for  each  and  each  for  all"  is  the 
motto  of  the  twentieth  century.  (Applause).  It  is 
not  to  be  built  for  private  profit,  but  is  to  be  built 
for  the  good  of  the  whole, — a  four-track  railway  of 
the  best  equipment  from  the  southern  end  of  Hud- 
son's Bay  to  Magellan's  Straits.  Second,  a  similar 
railway  from  Hamburg  or  St.  Petersburg,  or  both, 
to  the  Pacific.  It  is  only  five  or  six  thousand  miles 
across.  And  that  will  be  run  in  the  same  way, — and 
will  be  built.  And  I  will  tell  you  where  the  money  is 
coming  from  when  I  am  done.  Will  be  built  by  Joe 
Chamberlain  and  the  Emperor  of  Germany  and  a  few 
other  little  fellows.  That  will  be  their  contribu- 
tion. There  will  be  a  branch  down  to  Odessa,  four- 
track  branch.  And  from  Cairo  to  the  Cape.  That 
was  Cecil  Rhodes's.  Why  are  these  railways  essen- 
tial ?     That  is  the  real  point  of  the  duty  of  the  twen- 


THE  DUTIES  OF  THE  NEW  CENTURY  369 

tieth  century.  Why  are  they  essential  ?  Because 
now  nation  and  nation  are  not  knit  together;  nations 
turn  their  backs  upon  each  other.  Because  now 
class  and  class  are  not  knit  together;  because  now 
race  and  race  are  not  knit  together.  Now,  the  mean- 
ing of  this  world  is  that  it  shall  be  one  world  of  one 
blood,  all  the  races  of  mankind.  That  is  Paul's 
phrase,  and  a  very  good  one.  One  blood,  all  races  of 
mankind;  that  they  all  may  be  one,  "as  Thou,  Father 
art  in  me  and  I  in  Thee,"  that  they  may  be  perfected 
into  one, — that  is  the  prayer  of  the  Savior  of  the 
World  when  he  was  dying.  And  this  whole  world  is 
to  be  made  one  world  in  the  twentieth  century  and  not 
half  a  dozen  different  worlds  as  it  is  now,  and  that 
can  only  be  done  by  this  system  of  inter-state  and 
international  communication,  to  be  run,  not  for  the 
benefit  of  this  man,  of  this  corporation,  of  this  State 
of  New  York,  of  this  United  States,  but  by  one  for 
the  benefit  of  the  whole.  I  should  like  to  be  per- 
mitted to  have  my  five  minutes'  allowance  in  speaking 
of  the  Pan-American  road,  for  instance.  How  does 
it  aflPect  us  in  this  room  ?  I  am  speaking  in  this 
room  now  to — certainly  a  tenth  of  the  people  hearing 
me  have  been  to  Europe  in  the  last  twenty  years, 
many  of  you  have  lived  in  European  cities,  a  great 
many  of  you  can  speak  French  and  can  speak  Italian 
and  can  speak  German,  your  wives  and  your  daugh- 
ters have  heard  music  in  Dresden  and  other  cities; 
how  many  of  those  gentlemen  are  there  in  this  room, 
how  many  of  those  ladies  are  there  who  have  been  in 

24 


370  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

the  City  of  Mexico;  how  many  of  you  have  been  in 
Lima  for  the  winter;  how  many  of  you  have  been  in 
Bogota  for  the  winter  ?  You  know  the  Alps,  you 
know  parts  of  the  Alps, — this  man  has  been  over 
that  pass,  that  man  has  been  over  that  pass,  and  that 
pass,  and  another;  how  many  men  know  the  passes 
of  the  Andes — so  much  superior  in  grandeur  ?  One 
hundred,  fifty  men  in  this  room  know  the  Falls  of 
SchafFhausen — an  insignificant  little  cataract  as 
compared  with  the  water-falls  in  South  America. 
Those  are  instances  that  show  that  we  do  not  know 
anything  about  these  fifteen  states  with  whom  you 
allied  us  and  the  world  in  your  great  exposition  here. 
And  if  I  were  to  say  to-morrow  at  a  dinner,  if  I  were 
to  ask  what  did  they  do  down  at  the  Mexican  Con- 
gress last  fall  when  sixteen  nations  met  together 
there,  I  am  afraid  that  half  the  company  would  not 
know  there  was  any  Mexican  Congress — and  I  am 
afraid  two-thirds  of  them  would  not  know  what  they 
did  or  what  they  did  not  do.  Yet  there  was  a  con- 
gress in  Mexico  which  brought  sixteen  nations  into 
the  confederacy  of  twenty-four  nations  existing 
before,  so  that  now — twenty-four  and  sixteen  are 
forty  nations  are  knit  into  one  under  the  bonds  of  the 
Hague  conference  and  that  because  the  Pan-American 
Congress  sat  in  the  City  of  Mexico.  I  think  we 
might  carry  it  a  little  into  detail.  You  are  here  only 
501  miles  from  the  seaboard  at  Boston,  as  I  am  told 
when  I  buy  my  tickets.  Now  about  salt-bathing 
and  salt  water;  up  at  the  north  there,  within  600 


THE  DUTIES  OF   THE  NEW  CENTURY  371 

miles  of  us  as  the  bird  flies  there  is  a  bay,  has  beau- 
tiful beaches;  it  is  not  so  far  off  from  Buffalo  as  Bar 
Harbor  is,  where  some  of  those  ladies  went  last  sum- 
mer to  see  what  the  styles  were;  it  is  not  so  far  as  Mil- 
waukee, Mr.  Sprague;  and  that  is  called  James  Bay, 
the  southern  point  of  Hudson's  Bay.  There  is  rail- 
road communication  more  than  half  way  there  now 
and  I  am  told  my  Toronto  friends  are  getting  through 
a  railroad  that  is  going  all  the  way  there.  Suppose 
fifty  of  us  agree  here  now  that  we  will  meet  on  the  lOth 
of  June  next  at  James  Bay  and  that  we  will  hire  the 
Hudson  Bay  steamer  to  take  us  down  to  Fort  Church- 
ill and  spend  six  or  eight  weeks  there  reading  our 
Buffalo  Commercial  at  12  o'clock  at  night  or  playing 
ping-pong  at  12  o'clock  at  night  and  not  needing 
any  light  but  the  light  of  the  sun!  Let  us  start 
on  such  an  enterprise  as  that  to  see  what  the  northern 
end  of  the  Pan-American  Railway  means  and  to  see 
how  far  we  should  like  to  have  a  little  excursion  in 
that  direction  and  then  ask  whether  or  not  it  would 
not  be  a  nice  thing  when  December  comes  around 
and  the  days  are  so  awfully  short  as  they  are  begin- 
ning to  be  now,  and  run  down  and  go  into  a  fine  hotel 
which  the  Cape  Alma  people  have  opened  down 
there  recently  at  latitude  45  or  50,  so  that  we  could 
see  the  sun  at  midnight  there;  how  much  we  should 
enlarge  our  lives  if  we  would  go  loyally  into  this  en- 
terprise for  the  bringing  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men  together!  Just  now  as  we  sat  here  at  the  table, 
I  was  asked  how  a  certain  great  problem  is  to  be 


372  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

solved.  One  way  is,  easy  communication  between 
the  north  and  the  south.  If  our  friends  in  Alabama 
do  not  want  the  black  man  or  the  mulatto  at  work 
there,  there  are  plenty  of  people  in  this  world  that  do 
want  him  at  work.  And  I  will  close  this  part  of  my 
speech  by  just  an  allusion  to  the  Valley  of  the  Amazon ; 
the  Valley  of  the  Amazon,  one  of  the  first-discovered 
valleys  of  America.  An  English  writer,  not  a  crank, 
not  a  fool,  but  a  careful  student,  declares  to  us  that 
the  civilization  of  the  world  of  the  future  is  to  be 
around  the  Valley  of  the  Amazon.  As  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  world  was  once  around  Athens  and  the 
iEgean  Sea,  as  the  civilization  of  the  world  was  then 
around  Rome  and  the  Mediterranean,  as  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  world  has  been  around  London  and  Paris, 
this  writer  says  the  civilization  of  the  world  is  to  be 
around  the  valley  of  the  Amazon;  that  we  are  going 
to  live  somewhere  where  we  do  not  have  to  wear 
sheep-skins  and  goat-skins  as  we  do  here;  that  we  are 
going  to  live  somewhere  where  we  shall  not  be  de- 
pendent upon  anthracite  barons  or  anthracite  labor- 
ers as  we  are  here;  that  we  are  going  to  live  somewhere 
where  the  good  God  of  Heaven  sends  us  light  and 
heat  every  day,  as  much  of  it  as  we  want  or  as  little 
of  it  as  we  want,  where  you  and  I  laugh  and  say  *what 
fools  these  Englishmen  are.  Nobody  is  going  there.' 
Suppose  we  should  go  back  to  1803.  There  was  one 
man  of  sense  belonging  in  America  then  and  he 
happened  to  find  himself  in  Paris  and  his  name  was 
Robert  Livingston   and   he  was   a   New  Yorker — I 


THE  DUTIES  OF   THE  NEW  CENTURY  373 

should  think  you  would  be  proud  of  that — and  one 
fine  morning  a  man  named  Napoleon  sent  over  to 
him  and  said,  "I  want  to  give  you  the  Province  of 
Louisiana;  I  want  to  give  you  all  our  claim  on  the 
Valley  of  the  Mississippi,"  and  Livingston  says: 
"What  is  its  use?"  "You  shall  have  to  pay  me  a 
nominal  price  of  fifteen  million  dollars."  Livingston 
said,  "It's  a  bargain."  And  we  owe  to  that  moment 
of  Livingston's  proud  decision  the  fact  that  America 
is  America  today.  Mr.  Livingston  knew  that  Jefferson 
wouldn't  throw  him  overboard  in  a  minute,  as  he 
would  have  done  if  he  had  dared;  Livingston  knew  that 
Jefferson  believed  he  did  not  have  constitutional  power 
to  buy  it,  and  he  hadn't;  Jefferson  knew  till  he  died 
that  he  did  not  have  constitutional  power.  But 
Livingston  was  a  New  Yorker,  an  energetic  New 
Yorker,  a  man  who  dared  to  look  in  the  future;  and 
he  said,  "It's  a  bargain,"  and  Napoleon  was  held, 
and  Napoleon  said,  "I  have  given  England  a  mari- 
time rival  that  will  sooner  or  later  humble  her  pride," 
and  Livingston  wrote  home  to  Jefferson  and  he  said, 
"I  know  the  price  is  enormous,  but  I  have  found 
people  who  will  take  it  all  off  ouif  hands  and  leave  us 
the  city  of  Orleans  and  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi 
which  is  all  we  want.  I  know  the  price  is  enormous, 
but  I  have  assured  them  that  we  won't  send  one  im- 
migrant across  the  Mississippi  in  lOO  years."  That 
is  what  the  wisest  man  in  America  said  to  the  Presi- 
dent of  America  in  1803,  "I  have  assured  them  that 
we  will  not  send  a  man  across  the  Mississippi  in  100 


374  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

years."  Suppose  instead  of  that,  that  Mr.  Livingston 
had  been  a  prophet  Uke  our  friend  the  EngHsh  author 
of  whom  I  spoke  just  now  ?  Suppose  he  had  said, 
"  Before  a  hundred  years  are  over  there  will  be  a  city 
of  two  millions  of  people  within  150  miles  of  this 
Mississippi  River;  the  City  of  New  Orleans  will  be 
thus  and  so;  the  City  of  St.  Louis  will  be  thus  and  so 
before  100  years  are  over  that  valley  will  have  edu- 
cated a  set  of  statesmen,  before  100  years  are  over 
that  valley  will  have  educated  a  set  of  scholars,  a  set 
of  soldiers,  who  will  re-write  the  history  of  the  world." 
Suppose  he  had  made  a  prophecy  of  what  the  Valley 
of  the  Mississippi  is  today;  how  many  of  us  now 
would  say  that  Livingston  was  a  crank .? 

That  is  the  prophecy  which  is  made  to  us  of  the 
Valley  of  the  Amazon  today;  that  the  center  of  the 
civilization  of  the  world,  before  the  year  2002,  is 
going  to  be  in  the  valley  of  the  Amazon.  I  don't 
say  that  it  is  so,  but  I  say  we  have  no  more  right  to 
call  a  man  a  crank  that  says  so  than  we  should  have 
had  a  right  to  have  called  Livingston  a  crank  that 
day. 

The  truth  is  thatVhat  the  world  needs  is  an  easier 
passage  from  place  to  place  for  its  people.  God 
Almighty  has  been  pleased  to  place  in  Western  Ark- 
ansas and  beyond  some  of  the  finest  lands  in  the 
world  which  answer  to  the  sower  with  a  larger  meas- 
ure of  harvest  than  any  other,  and  you  and  I  may 
travel  three  hundred  miles  from  north  to  south 
through  that  region  and  we  may  see  once  an  hour 


THE  DUTIES  OF  THE  NEW  CENTURY  375 

a  smoke  or  a  tank  of  water  and  that  is  all,  and  here  is 
Mr.  Bevington,  here  is  Mr.  Brown,  here  is  Mr. Wright, 
here  is  Mr.  Pritchard,  here  am  I,  put  into  great  cities 
where  we  are  trying  to  keep  pure  the  morals  of  people 
who  are  crowded  together  at  the  rate  of  a  thousand 
people  to  the  acre.  Do  you  tell  me  that  God  Al- 
mighty ever  meant  any  such  thing  ?  Not  He.  That 
is  a  piece  of  what  people  used  to  call  deviltry,  and 
that  has  got  to  be  broken  up  by  the  arrangement 
which  shall  make  it  easy  for  the  crowded  tenement 
house  of  New  York  to  discharge  itself  upon  the  fertile 
prairies  of  Arkansas.  It  shall  make  it  easier  for  the 
oppressed  black  man  in  Alabama  to  settle  himself 
in  those  waiting,  empty  valleys  of  the  Amazon.  Back 
and  forth,  back  and  forth  the  shuttle  must  fly  and 
the  civilization  of  the  world  is  advanced  as  the  shuttle 
flies.  That  is  what  we  have  got  to  do  here,  what  you 
gentlemen  have  got  to  do  here.  I  shall  sit  by  and 
play  on  the  pipe  and  be  glad  to  see  you  do  it.  We 
have  got  to  make  a  four-track  railway  between  the 
Hudson  Bay  and  the  Straits  of  Magellan.  Precisely 
in  the  same  way,  and  I  won't  go  into  details,  because 
that  is  not  our  part  of  the  contract;  precisely  in  the 
same  way  must  Europe  and  Asia  do  the  work  which 
shall  unite  the  western  parts  of  the  crowded  European 
hemisphere  with  Asia  and  throw  those  people  into 
the  eastern  part  of  that  hemisphere,  and  I  ought  to 
say — yes,  I  do  say — that  the  misery  of  China  will  be 
relieved  in  just  the  same  way  when  you  permit  those 
Chinese  people,  crowded  together  as  they  are,  to  go 


376  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

up  on  the  immense  wheat-raising  districts  of  Siberia — 
rival  to  Manitoba — if  only  you  would  give  them  the 
chance  which  we  are  giving  in  Manitoba.  That 
work  has  got  to  be  done  in  Europe  with,  as  I  said 
just  now,  working  branches  down  into  Odessa  and  to 
the  south.  And  in  Africa — great  Heaven,  if  they 
had  had  the  wit  to  consider  it  five  years  ago  this  bar- 
barism and  misery  of  the  last  years  in  the  Cape  would 
have  all  been  over.  Mr.  Joe  Chamberlain,  the 
alpha  of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  I  like  to  call  him, 
would  be  spared  the  mission  of  love  which  he  is 
undertaking  to  do  with  his  dear  wife  to  try  to  heal  up 
the  wounds  which  he  himself  has  made;  we  should 
have  South  Africa  in  different  condition  from  what 
it  is  now. 

There  are  three  physical  enterprises  on  which  the 
world  is  committed — all  for  each  and  each  for  all — 
and  now  we  here,  anybody  that  speaks  as  I  speak 
is  called  a  crank  and  a  fool,  and  why .?  Mr.  Booker 
Washington  told  you  last  night.  Mr.  Booker  Wash- 
ington is  telling  somebody  the  same  question  to- 
night. It  is  because  you  have  this  question  of  race 
open  before  you  and  there  is  not  a  man  in  this  room 
who  dares  say  how  that  question  is  to  be  answered. 
All  we  can  say  is  that  there  is  a  good  God,  that  we  are 
children  of  the  Good  God,  that  we  are  made  in  His 
nature  and  that  what  He  does  we  can  do;  that  we  can 
ally  ourselves  to  Him  and  that  our  hope  is  in  Him; 
but  the  great  duty  before  the  American  citizen  of  this 
hour   is    the   reconciliation   of  the   races;    that   this 


THE  DUTIES  OF  THE  NEW  CENTURY  377 

Anglo-Saxon  race  which  knows  how  to  rule  so  well, 
may  be  tamed  and  tempered  in  its  ambitions  and  its 
audacities;  that  this  black  race  which  has  so  often 
shown  itself  tender,  gentle,  forgiving,  which  has 
shown  itself,  shall  I  say,  to  have  a  certain  mastery  in 
the  fine  arts,  in  music,  of  which  we  Anglo-Saxons 
cannot  boast,  that  it  shall  contribute  its  share  in  a 
higher  civilization.  And  if  our  red  friends — there 
are  not  a  great  many  of  them;  you  had  about  half  of 
them,  I  believe,  at  the  exposition  here  last  year, — 
if  they  should  manage  to  teach  us  Anglo-Saxons  how 
to  live  out  of  doors  and  how  to  tell  the  truth — I  be- 
lieve that  is  one  of  their  maxims — they  would  give  us 
something;  and  really,  although  we  do  not  believe 
much  in  Chinamen  if  we  are  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  I  never  meet  a  man  who  has 
really  known  a  pure-minded  Chinaman  but  thought 
that  the  yellow  race  had  something  for  us.  The 
communion  of  the  races,  the  bringing  of  the  races  to 
bear  each  other's  burdens,  the  work  which  is  begun 
at  Hampton,  at  Tuskeegee,  at  Calhoun,  at  the  Tenne- 
see  School,  if  we  can  carry  that  to  its  twentieth  power 
we  have  some  chance,  and  that  will  be  carried  further 
and  further  by  these  very  physical  enterprises  which 
must  redeem  Africa  and  Asia  and  Europe  and  Amer- 
ica altogether. 

Well,  of  course,  before  I  have  advanced  halfway  in 
what  I  have  been  saying,  everybody  has  said,  ^'Yes, 
but  this  man  is  a  fool  because  he  supposes  that  the 
nations  are  going  to  harmonize  with  each  other  in 


378  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

this  fashion  instead  of  cutting  each  other's  throats." 
Yes,  this  cannot  be  done  if  the  nations  cut  each 
other's  throats,  that  is  true.  Still  there  are  some  great 
examples  there.  I  cannot  help  remembering  that 
I  should  not  have  that  woollen  coat  on  my  arm, 
should  not  have  this  linen  shirt  on  here  but  that  all 
Europe  was  at  peace  for  two  hundred  years  after 
Trajan's  time,  when  the  woollen  coat  was  brought 
into  Western  Europe  and  the  linen  was  brought  in 
there — roses,  peaches,  candles,  this  table-cloth, 
everything  the  result  of  Europe  at  peace  between  the 
year  60  and  the  year  260.  It  wasn't  necessary  for 
people  to  cut  their  throats  then.  The  great  duty  of 
the  century, — I  might  have  made  my  whole  speech 
about  it  perhaps  to  advantage — is  to  see  that  nation 
does  not  make  war  against  nation  and  that  men  need 
study  arms  no  more.  The  great  victory  of  the  last 
century  was  the  victory  at  the  Hague,  where  they 
came  together,  eighty  of  the  first  men  of  the  world, 
not  the  men  of  newspapers,  not  the  men  of  cyclo- 
pedias, not  the  men  of  epaulets,  but  the  foremost 
statesmen  who  had  been  working  over  the  treaties 
of  Europe  and  this  diplomacy,  those  men  came  to- 
gether,— came  together,  by  the  way,  absolutely  hope- 
less— when  the  Hague  conference  met,  the  great 
body  of  people  were  absolutely  hopeless  of  bringing 
anything  to  pass.  But  they  had  the  great  fortune  of 
having  among  them  a  few  leaders  who  were  abso- 
lutely determined  that  something  should  come  to 
pass,  and,   among  ourselves  privately  I  would   say 


THE  DUTIES  OF   THE  NEW  CENTURY  379 

that  they  had  the  great  good  fortune  to  have  the  bar 
of  the  State  of  New  York,  led  by  such  gentlemen  as 
— well,  Mr.  Depew  of  whom  some  of  you  have  heard, 
led  by  such  gentlemen  as  Grover  Cleveland  of  whom 
some  of  you  have  heard,  led  by  such  gentlemen  as  my 
friend  Mr.  Rogers  here  of  whom  some  of  you  have 
heard;  the  Bar  of  New  York  had  three  years  before 
this  made  its  scheme  for  an  international  court  which 
should  hear  the  contests  arising  between  all  civilized 
nations,  the  first  scheme  put  on  paper  by  lawyers  for 
that  purpose,  and  they  had  at  The  Hague  that 
scheme  as  the  model  on  which  to  start  the  work,  and 
your  Andrew  White  and  your  Seth  Low  and  your 
Frederick  House,  three  New  Yorkers,  were  in  that 
delegation,  and  speaking  perfectly  reverently  those 
men  said,  "As  God  lives,  something  shall  come 
through  here;"  and  in  the  English  delegation  they 
had  our  friend  Lord  Pauncefote,  they  had  two  or 
three  gentlemen  whom  I  need  not  here  name;  and  in 
the  Russian  delegation  they  had  Martens,  I  don't 
think  the  name  is  much  known  here,  but  they  call 
him  in  Europe  the  chief  justice  of  Christendom;  Mar- 
tens has  sat,  I  believe,  at  twenty-eight  different  arbi- 
tration courts  as  the  one  man  selected  by  the  different 
arbitrators  to  hold  the  balance;  twenty-eight  times 
has  he  made  decisions  which  have  resulted  in  peace  in- 
stead of  war,  so  over  there  they  call  him  the  chief 
justice  of  Christendom;  and  they  had,  as  Mr.  Mac- 
Veagh  said  the  other  day,  they  had  God  on  their  side; 
that  is  an  important  ally;  and  those  men,  with  the 


380  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

assistance  of  the  good  God,  hammered  away  and 
pegged  away  so  that  we  got  the  Hague  conference 
and  we  got  the  court  of  tribunal  before  which  the 
nations  of  the  world  could  bring  their  questions  for 
discussion.  Well,  then  they  began  laughing  at  us. 
They  said,  "Why  don't  they  appear?"  "Why  don't 
they  appear  ?"  I  am  speaking,  I  dare  say,  to  judges 
of  the  Supreme  Court  in  New  York  who  have  at- 
tended at  courts  where  nobody  appeared.  I  know 
that  for  the  first  nine  sessions  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States,  for  two  years  and  a  quarter, 
nobody  appeared  with  a  case  between  state  and  state; 
the  court  met  and  adjourned  and  met  and  adjourned 
and  met  and  adjourned,  it  was  two  years  and  three 
months  before  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  heard  a  case; — and  in  less  than  three  years  we 
had  the  honor  and  our  sister  republic  of  Mexico  had 
the  honor  of  bringing  the  Pious  Fund  Claim  before 
the  Supreme  Court  of  Nations.  I  am  speaking  to  a 
great  many  intelligent  gentlemen;  I  know  something 
of  it  myself;  and  I  venture  to  say  that  nobody  in  this 
room  knows  what  the  Pious  Fund  Claim  was  and 
nobody  knows  how  it  was  decided,  but  we  do  know 
that  it  was  decided  and  is  off  the  books  forever.  (Ap- 
plause). And  the  next  thing  that  is  on  them  is  the 
poor  Chinese  Emperor's  needs — the  Chinese  Em- 
peror who  was  the  only  person  of  all  the  nations  rep- 
resented who  declined  to  accede  to  the  Hague  Tri- 
bunal,— is  now  the  person  on  his  knees  requesting  the 
Hague  Tribunal  to  hear  his  case  and  to  decide  it. 


THE  DUTIES  OF    THE  NEW   CENTURY  381 

That  is  the  advance  which  has  been  made.  And  now, 
for  the  century  before  us,  that  might  be  said  to  be 
the  great  duty,  it  is  the  duty  of  peace  among  the  na- 
tions. Mr  friend,  Mr.  Percival  Lowell,  and  some 
of  you  gentlemen  know  the  gentlemen  in  California 
and  in  Geneva  who  with  our  great  telescopes  are 
bringing  the  gospel  to  us  of  the  planet  Mars,  the  red 
planet,  the  planet  of  war,  red  because  it  was  a  red 
desert  a  hundred  years  ago,  but  no  longer  red — do  you 
know  that } — not  so  much  red  as  it  was;  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  planet  Mars  at  work,  each  for  all  and  all 
for  each,  have  been  building  the  gigantic  water-ways 
which  carry  down  the  snows  as  they  melt  from  its 
Arctic  and  its  Antarctic,  to  fertilize  and  to  make  green 
the  red  Saharas  of  the  central  parts  of  the  planet. 
They  haven't  learned  in  Mars,  they  don't  know  every- 
thing, but  they  have  learned  how  nation  shall  not 
make  war  against  nation  and  that  men  need  study 
arms  no  more.  And  if  any  gentleman  asked  in  his 
mind  how  Dr.  Hale  and  the  prophets  of  the  new  cen- 
tury mean  to  pay  for  the  four-track  railways  and  the 
branches  and  the  rest,  we  have  got  our  lesson  from 
the  planet  Mars.  I  sent  the  necessary  figures  to  one 
of  the  most  accomplished  civil  engineers  in  this  coun- 
try and  I  asked  him  how  much  my  four-track  railways 
would  cost  thoroughly  equipped  and  with  the  engines 
upon  them,  and  it  proves  that  as  soon  as  you  will  tell 
me  that  I  may  set  the  engineers  at  work  upon  them 
we  can  build  the  railways,  the  three  railways,  double- 
tracked  and  equip  them,  for  one-half  of  what   it  cost 


382  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

the  Continent  of  Europe  in  1901  to  maintain  its 
military  and  naval  expenses.  (Applause.)  I  shall 
not  have  to  ask  Uncle  Sam  for  a  cent;  he  may  throw 
away  his  money  upon  his  steel  ships  as  much  as  he 
wants  to;  I  shall  not  have  to  ask  Mr.  Joe  Chamber- 
lain or  Mr.  Balfour  for  a  cent;  they  may  build  their 
fleets  to  be  sold  for  junk  at  the  end  of  twenty  years  if 
they  want  to.  The  Powers  of  Europe  alone  spent 
money  enough  in  the  last  year  on  their  military  and 
naval  expenses,  which  were  not  worth  that  [snap- 
ping finger]  to  them  as  they  went  by,  to  pay  for  my 
railways  twice  over.  I  can  have  two  sets  of  railways 
if  I  can  only  persuade  those  sovereigns  to  cut  off 
their  war  expenses  for  a  single  year.  That  is  where 
we  are  going  to  pay  for  them.  We  are  not  going  to 
make  the  gentlemen  in  Buffalo  subscribe  for  the 
stock  with  any  expectation  of  dividends.  We  are 
going  to  make  the  people  of  the  world  determine 
that  nation  shall  not  make  war  against  nation  and 
that  men  need  study  arms  no  longer.  And  I  have  a 
right  to  say,  as  I  sit  down,  the  prospect  of  these  duties 
for  the  future  is  not  so  dark  as  twenty  years  ago  it 
would  have  seemed,  not  so  dark  as  ten  years  ago  it 
would  have  seemed.  The  Emperor  of  Russia  may 
not  have  been  so  great  a  fool  as  the  gentlemen  who 
write  the  best  for  you  thought  twenty  years  ago. 
It  may  be  that  the  man  who  had  read  every  treaty 
made  in  Europe  for  thirty  years  knew  better  what 
was  in  those  treaties  than  the  persons  who  had  not 
read  a  word  of  them.     It  may  be  that  when  he  said, 


THE  DUTIES  OF  THE  NEW  CENTURY  383 

"This  is  the  time  when  it  will  be  most  possible  for 
the  nations  of  the  world  to  come  together  and  ar- 
range for  a  permanent  tribunal  before  which  they 
should  settle  their  disputes,"  it  may  be  that  he 
knew  what  he  was  talking  about.  At  all  events 
from  the  moment  that  he  spoke  that  great  word,  the 
cause  of  peace  among  the  nations — and  it  is  now  four 
years  ago  nearly — has  advanced  with  regular  step. 
And  if  you  and  I  can  persuade  ourselves  to  look  for- 
ward and  not  backward,  if  we  can  persuade  ourselves 
to  look  up  and  not  down,  if  we  can  persuade  ourselves 
to  look  out  and  not  in,  and  if  we  can  lend  a  hand  in 
the  great  endeavors  of  the  century,  the  fine  duties  of 
the  century  will  be  fulfilled  at  the  end  of  the  year 
1999.     (Applause.) 


5anuats  16,  1903. 
ARE    WE   WORSE   THAN    OUR    FATHERS? 

HON.  CHARLES  EMORY  SMITH. 

It  is  a  great  pleasure  for  me  to  come  here  to-night. 
It  is  more  than  a  pleasure.  I  know  the  high  reputa- 
tion of  this  club;  I  know  the  great  array  of  dis- 
tinguished men  that  you  have  brought  to  your  board, 
and  I  esteem  it  not  only  a  pleasure  but  a  great  honor 
to  be  invited  to  be  one  of  that  list. 

Your  President  has  said  that  if  we  are  worse  than 
our  fathers  we  know  whom  to  hold  accountable.  The 
question  is  not  yet  answered,  and  I  shall  hold  the 
President  to  his  logic  by  saying  that  if  we  are  not 
worse  than  our  fathers  then  we  know  also  whom  to 
hold  accountable.     (Laughter.) 

I  went  to  Michigan  last  week,  upon  invitation,  to 
make  substantially  the  talk  which  I  shall  make  to- 
night, upon  the  same  theme.  There  was  an  irreverent 
newspaper  paragrapher  in  that  town,  a  paragrapher 
who  evidently  had  no  respect  for  man  or  angel — and  I 
broaden  his  classification  so  that  there  can  be  no  mis- 
take about  its  including  myself  (laughter) — and  he 
said,  "Mr.  Smith  comes  here  to  ask  *Are  we  worse 
than  our  fathers  .?'  Never  having  heard  Mr.  Smith's 
father  we  are  unable  to  answer  the  question." 
(Laughter.)     If  any  of  you  are  disposed  to  put  the 


ARE   WE   WORSE  THAN  OUR  FATHERS  385 

proposition  in  the  same  way,  let  me  remind  you  that 
there  are  some  here,  possibly  not  many,  whose  fathers  I 
knew,  and  it  might  not  be  well  to  pursue  the  inquiry. 
(Laughter.) 

*'Our  reverence  for  the  past,"  said  Theodore 
Parker,  "is  just  in  proportion  to  our  ignorance  of  it. " 
That  is  an  extreme  and  extravagant  statement.  We 
may  not  study  all  the  steps  and  all  the  motives  in  the 
advance  of  social  and  civic  life;  we  may  not  accurately 
measure  all  the  lights  and  shadows  in  the  advance  of 
civihzation,  but  the  general  judgment  of  mankind  is 
intelligent  and  fair,  and  without  professing  to  weigh 
all  the  faults  against  all  the  virtues,  the  general  judg- 
ment upon  the  men  and  events  of  the  by-gone  days  is, 
in  the  main,  reasonable  and  just.  It  is  true  that  the 
verdict  of  history  is  often  diverse  and  contradictory. 
History  fights  over  again  the  flaming  and  strenuous 
battles  of  the  past.  The  French  historian  exalts 
Napoleon  and  the  English  historian  debases  him. 
The  rich  color  of  romance  often  fades  away  under  the 
glaring  sunlight  of  penetrating  research.  The  spirit 
of  historical  investigation  in  our  day  is  far  more 
searching  and  critical.  We  have  now  our  true  Frank- 
lin, our  true  Jefferson,  even  our  true  George  Washing- 
ton, and  within  the  last  month  we  have  had  put  forth 
what  purports  to  be  the  true  history  of  the  American 
Revolution;  and  though  of  these  figures  the  new 
portraiture  may  be  a  little  less  angelic  than  the  old,  it 
is  at  the  same  time  a  Httle  more  human.  It  has  been 
quite  the  fashion  to  exalt  the  lofty  virtues  of  the  past 

26 


386  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

days  in  comparison  with  the  assumed  degeneracy  of 
our  times.  We  have  recently  passed  through  the 
centennial  epoch,  a  period  of  centennial  celebrations, 
from  Lexington  to  the  Washington  Inaugural,  com- 
memorating events  w^hich  established  our  independ- 
ence and  made  us  a  nation.  It  has  been  a  period  of 
patriotic  fervor  and  of  glov^ing  panegyric  and  no 
eulogium  which  can  be  passed  upon  the  transcendent 
importance  of  those  great  events  in  their  relation  to 
the  political  progress  of  mankind  and  upon  the 
magestic  actors  can  exceed  the  truth.  The  spirit 
which  exalts  what  we  call  the  heroic  age  of  the  Re- 
public and  holds  it  up  for  our  example  and  admiration 
is  altogether  right,  but  when  it  elevates  the  sires  by 
decrying  the  sons,  and  when  it  exalts  the  past  by  be- 
wailing the  present,  it  is  time  for  a  protest.  If  you 
tell  me  of  the  lofty  virtues  and  illustrious  deeds  of  the 
early  days  I  answer,  "Yes,  but  look  about  you  and 
you  shall  find  their  match  in  our  own  times."  If  you 
tell  me  of  the  abuses  and  evils  and  wrongs  of  our  day, 
I  answer,  **Yes,  but  search  the  records  and  you  will 
find  them  blended  even  with  Revolutionary  glories." 
You  shall  not  exceed  me  in  reverent  homage  for  the 
great  ones  gone  forever  by,  but  I  summon  you  in  turn 
not  to  believe  that  the  age  in  which  you  live  is  worse 
than  those  which  have  gone  before.  We  often  hear  it 
said  that  ours  is  a  selfish  and  speculative  era,  and  that 
under  the  influence  of  this  greed  public  virtue  has  de- 
cayed. But  this  is  no  new  complaint.  "Where  is 
virtue  now .?"  wrote  Henry  Laurens,  president  of  the 


ARE    WE   WORSE   THAN   OUR   FATHERS  387 

Continental  Congress  in  1778,  to  George  Washington, 
two  years  after  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and 
in  the  very  midst  of  the  Revolutionary  War, — "Where 
is  patriotism  now,  when  almost  every  man  turns  his 
thought  to  gains  and  pleasures  and  practices  every 
artifice  of  Change  Alley  and  Jonathan?"  "Jona- 
than" being  the  name  of  a  well-known  resort  of  specu- 
lators in  that  day.  The  Revolution  had  its  shadows 
as  well  as  its  splendors.  The  glories  of  Monmouth 
and  Saratoga  shot  athwart  a  sky  of  darkness.  The 
Continentals  in  1776,  and  in  the  succeeding  years 
bore  no  such  proportion,  nothing  like  it,to  the  fighting 
population  as  the  Boys  in  Blue  bore  in  1861,  and  the 
succeeding  years.  The  heroism  of  Trenton  and  the 
patient  fortitude  of  Valley  Forge  sent  their  thrilling 
appeal  to  wrangling  colonies  that  jarred  and  clashed 
even  in  their  common  revolt  against  the  British  yoke. 
The  great  need  of  the  Revolutionary  struggle  was  the 
adoption  of  the  Articles  of  Confederation  which  were 
in  reality  the  only  authority  and  the  only  bond  of 
actual  union,  and  yet  years  went  by  without  their 
ratification.  Most  of  the  colonies  utterly  neglected 
and  disregarded  the  requisitions  of  Congress  and  New 
Jersey  absolutely  refused  to  obey  them.  This  long 
delay  in  the  ratification  so  encouraged  Lord  North 
that  he  declared  to  Parliament  that  it  might  implicitly 
rely  upon  the  success  of  the  British  government.  The 
delay  caused  the  greatest  uneasiness  and  anxiety  on 
the  part  of  our  French  ally  and  it  undoubtedly 
greatly  prolonged  the  war.     And  what  was  the  cause 


388  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

of  that  delay  and  discord  ?  Chiefly  the  jealousy  of 
the  colonies  among  themselves  and  their  conflict 
over  the  division  of  the  v^estern  territory,  a  conflict 
w^hich  was  a  struggle  for  territorial  aggrandizement 
and  which  almost  paralized  the  struggle  for  inde- 
pendence. It  created  such  feehng  that  the  ratifica- 
tion of  the  Articles  of  Confederation  did  not  come  till 
six  years  after  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
the  result  was  such  that  Washington  himself  said  that 
independence,  respectability,  consequence  before 
Europe  and  greatness  as  a  nation  all  depended  on  a 
change.  The  convention  which  framed  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  United  States  was  the  grandest  assemblage 
in  the  history  of  the  world.  It  contained  more  of 
political  wisdom  and  more  of  lofty  inspiration  than 
was  ever  gathered  in  any  other  hall.  And  it  struck 
out,  as  Mr.  Gladstone  said,  the  greatest  piece  of  con- 
structive statesmanship  in  the  annals  of  time.  Yet 
that  body,  with  its  almost  Divine  Wisdom,  had  its 
differences,  its  conflicts,  its  discord,  its  weakness. 
Luther  Martin,  who  was  a  delegate  from  Maryland, 
said  that  for  near  a  fortnight,  **we  were  on  the  verge 
of  dissolution,  scarce  held  together  by  a  single  hair;" 
and  even  Washington  himself,  who  presided  over  that 
convention,  actually  wrote  to  his  friend  Hamilton  that 
he  repented  of  having  had  any  part  in  it  and  despaired 
of  a  favorable  conclusion.  When,  finally,  immortal 
success  did  crown  its  labors  and  the  new  government 
was  successfully  inaugurated,  party  spirit  broke  out 
with  a  fury  which  we  have  never  seen  equalled  in  our 


ARE  WE  WORSE  THAN  OUR  FATHERS  389 

day.  For  a  time  the  overshadowing  authority  of 
Washington  held  it  in  check.  But  during  his  second 
term  even  the  supreme  influence  of  Washington  v^as 
unable  to  quench  the  fires  of  party  passion  and  they 
blazed  out  with  a  fury  which  we  have  never  seen 
equalled  in  our  times.  From  the  day  of  the  final 
success  of  the  colonies  in  1783,  under  Washington's 
leadership,  his  birthday  had  always  been  celebrated 
as  we  celebrate  it  now;  but  in  1795,  while  he  was  still 
President,  in  the  last  year  but  one  of  his  term,  the 
Houseof  Representatives  sullenly  refused  to  partici- 
pate in  the  observance  of  that  day  and  put  a  deliberate 
afl^ront  upon  the  Father  of  his  Country. 

We  are  accustomed  to  the  charge  of  corruption  and 
fraud,  and  we  often  think  it  belongs  peculiarly  to  our 
own  time  but  it  was  as  common  in  the  early  days  of 
the  Republic  as  now.  In  the  presidential  election  of 
1796  for  the  choice  of  Washington's  successor,  charges 
of  fraud  were  made  and  they  were  established  to  such 
an  extent  as  would  put  the  blush  today  upon  any  State 
where  there  is  a  pretense  of  fair  elections. 

We  have  heard  a  great  outcry  in  our  day  upon  the 
charge  that  men  have  been  called  to  the  Cabinet  for 
their  services  in  improper  methods  of  securing  votes 
for  presidential  candidates.  That  charge,  I  believe,  in 
its  later  application  is  entirely  unfounded.  But  what 
of  the  past  ?  In  the  presidential  election  of  1800  there 
was  a  tie  in  the  Electoral  College  between  Jefferson 
and  Burr.  You  remember  at  that  time,  though  the 
candidates  were  specifically  nominated  for  President 


390  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

and  Vice-President,they  were  not  voted  for  as  Presi- 
dent and  Vice-President  in  the  Electoral  College  but 
the  candidate  having  the  highest  vote  v^as  declared 
President,  and  the  one  having  the  next  highest  vote 
was  declared  Vice-President.  Jefferson  and  Burr  were 
the  candidates  of  their  party  for  President,and  Vice- 
President,and  it  happened  that  there  was  a  tie  between 
them.  That  threw  the  election  into  the  House  of 
Representatives;  the  vote  of  New  York  was  vital; 
New  York  was  then  a  pivotal  State,  as  we  have  some- 
times since  heard  it  called  a  pivotal  State.  Burr  be- 
longed to  New  York.  How  was  Jefferson  to  beat  him 
on  his  own  ground  ?  The  ten  members  of  New  York 
who  were  to  cast  the  vote  of  this  State  in  the  House 
of  Representatives  were  under  the  dominating  in- 
fluence of  Edward  Livingston.  Jefferson  could  not 
approach  that  eminent  man;  no  man  could  improper- 
ly approach  him.  But  while  the  contest  was  still  un- 
decided Jefferson  wrote  a  letter  to  his  brother,  Robert 
Livingston,  asking  him  if  he  would  not  like  a  seat  in  the 
Cabinet.  Has  history  ever  found  any  explanation  of 
that  curiously-timed  inquiry  except  as  a  subtle,  crafty 
and  not  over-scrupulous  method  of  reaching  the  un- 
determined vote  .?  Nor  was  this  all  that  there  was  of 
interest  or  suggestion  in  that  memorable"  contest. 
The  decaying  Federal  Party,  though  beaten  in  the 
contest  for  President,  before  the  people,  still  had  con- 
trol of  the  House  of  Representatives  and  thus  had  the 
power  to  determine  whether  Jefferson  or  Burr  should 
be  President  of  the  United  States.     Embittered  by  its 


ARE  WE  WORSE   THAN  OUR  FATHERS  391 

defeat  the  Federal  Party  was  on  the  point  of  electing 
Burr  to  the  Presidency.  Until  the  tie  came  hehad  never 
been  dreamed  of,  even  by  his  own  party,  as  a  candi- 
date for  President;  but  the  Federal  Party  came  near 
elevating  to  the  Chief  Magistracy  that  crafty,  adroit, 
unscrupulous  conspirator  who  afterwards  engaged  in 
sedition  against  the  United  States  and  who  became  the 
murderer  of  the  great  statesman  who  was  chiefly  re- 
sponsible for  his  defeat,  and  it  desisted  from  that  pur- 
pose partly  because  it  made  better  terms  with  Jeff"er- 
son  and  partly  because  Alexander  Hamilton — to  his 
undying  honor  be  it  said — gave  his  paramount  in- 
fluence for  the  election  of  his  ancient  rival  and  his  re- 
lentless antagonist.  But  Hamilton  was  not  without 
his  faults.  When  he  found  his  party  beaten  he  wrote 
a  letter  to  John  Jay,  governor  of  the  State  of  New 
York,  asking  him  to  convene  the  legislature  in  extra 
session  for  the  purpose  of  changing  the  electoral  law. 
The  electors  of  New  York  were  then  chosen  by  the 
legislature.  The  old  legislature  was  Federal;  the 
new  legislature,  chosen  in  that  action,  was  Republican 
or  Democratic — whichever  you  please  to  call  Jeffer- 
son's party  (laughter) — and  Hamilton  asked  Gov. 
Jay  to  convene  the  new  legislature  in  extra  session  in 
order  that  it  might  change  the  electoral  law  and 
arrogate  to  itself  the  choice  of  electors,  thus  usurping 
the  right  lawfully  belonging  to  the  new  legislature,  an 
act  more  seditious  and  revolutionary  than  any  act 
of  any  returning  board  of  our  time;  an  act  which  Gov. 
Jay,  of  whom  Webster  said  that  when  the  spotless 


392  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

ermine  of  the  judicial  robe  fell  on  John  Jay  it  touched 
nothing  not  as  spotless  as  itself, — an  act  which  Gov. 
Jay  rightly  refused  to  entertain.  I  would  not  pluck 
a  single  leaf  from  the  bright  garland  of  Hamilton's  un- 
rivalled fame;  no  man  can  surpass  me  in  admiration 
of  that  consummate  prodigy  of  American  history, — 
Hamilton,  the  public  disputatorat  17,  the  trusty  aide 
of  Washington  at  20,  at  28  almost  the  master  spirit  of 
the  convention  which  framed  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States;  at  32  the  consummate  leader  and 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  who  touched  the  rock  of 
the  national  resources  and  the  streams  of  national 
credit  gushed  forth;  Hamilton,  at  once  soldier,  legist 
financier,  orator,  statesman  and  pre-eminent  in  every 
realm;  I  believe,  with  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  that 
Hamilton  was  the  greatest  man  this  country  has  ever 
seen,  always  excepting  George  Washington  and  per- 
haps excepting  one  who  came  later  than  Marshall, 
perhaps  also  excepting  Abraham  Lincoln.  (Applause). 
But  Hamilton,  with  all  his  genius  and  all  his  lofty 
patriotism,  was  human,  as  are  the  statesmen  of  today. 
No  exceptional  political  code  ruled  even  what  we  call 
the  heroic  age  of  the  Republic.  There  were  North 
and  South  then,  as  now,  with  their  diverse  interests 
and  passions  and  ambitions.  Hamilton,  as  a  part 
of  the  great  fiscal  policy,  insisted  that  the  Nation 
should  assume  the  debts  of  the  States.  He  was 
right,  because  the  States  had  incurred  their  debts 
in  the  creation  of  the  Nation.  The  North  favored 
his  policy;  the  South  opposed  it.     The  two  sections 


ARE  WE  WORSE  THAN  OUR  FATHERS  393 

differed  also  on  the  location  of  the  national  capital. 
The  North  wanted  it  on  the  banks  of  the  Susque- 
hanna; the  South  wanted  it  on  the  banks  of  the 
Potomac.  How  were  these  differences  to  be  recon- 
ciled except  by  the  modern  method  of  give-and- 
take  ? — the  North  winning  on  the  debt  policy  and 
the  South  winning  as  to  the  location  of  the  capitol. 
In  that  agreement  Jefferson  concurred  with  Hamilton. 
It  was  about  the  only  thing  they  ever  did  agree  on, 
and  it  was  as  much  a  matter  of  parliamentary  leger- 
demain as  any  legislative  log-rolling  of  our  day  on  a 
river-and-harbor  bill. 

We  are  familiar  with  the  legislative  evil  known  as 
filibustering.  Do  we  imagine  that  it  is  an  invention 
of  our  own  times .?  Go  back  to  the  Pennsylvania 
legislature  of  1787.  It  consisted  then  of  one  house. 
It  had  passed  a  resolution  to  adjourn  sine  die  on  the 
29th  of  September.  The  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  had  just  been  completed  in  that  same  city  of 
Philadelphia  and  the  transcendant  question  of  the  day 
was  whether  it  should  be  ratified  by  the  States.  On 
the  morning  of  the  28th  of  September  a  resolution  was 
introduced  calling  a  convention  in  Pennsylvania  for 
the  ratification  of  the  Constitution  and  providing  for 
the  election  of  delegates.  While  the  debate  on  this 
resoultion  was  proceeding  and  still  unfinished,  the 
legislature  took  a  recess  for  dinner.  The  opponents 
of  the  Constitution  and  of  a  convention  for  its  ratifica- 
tion were  in  a  minority;  but  the  presence  of  two  of 
them   at   least  was   necessary   to   make   a   quorum. 


394  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

During  the  recess,  for  the  purpose  of  defeating  the 
Constitution  and  the  convention  in  itself  to  ratify  it, 
all  the  members  of  the  minority  agreed  to  remain 
away.  When  the  legislature  reassembled  in  the  after- 
noon it  found  itself  without  a  quorum.  It  sent  the 
sergeant-at-arms  to  summon  the  absent  members, 
and  with  one  accord  they  refused  to  come  and  the 
legislature  was  compelled  to  adjourn  till  the  next  day 
for  want  of  a  quorum.  On  the  following  morning, — 
which,  mind  you,  was  to  be  the  last  day  of  the  session 
the  recusancy  of  the  recalcitrant  members  still  con- 
tinued; they  refused  to  attend.  But  their  recusancy 
had  been  noised  abroad  and  the  city  was  deeply 
excited.  The  large  body  of  the  people  assembled  and 
proceeded  to  the  tavern  where  the  members  of  the 
minority  were  gathered  together  and  they  took  two  of 
them  and  dragged  them  violently  to  the  hall  of  the 
legislature,  thrust  them  inside,  closed  and  guarded  the 
doors  while  the  legislature  proceeded  to  complete  its 
work.  That  was  a  method  of  securing  and  counting  a 
quorum  and  of  stopping  filibustering  which  antedated 
the  effective  measure  of  resolute  Tom  Reed  (applause) 
— of  Tom  Reed  who  passed  away  the  other  day  amid 
the  universal  regret  of  the  American  people  and  with 
a  universal  tribute  to  the  intellectual  genius  and  to  the 
dauntless  courage  which  had  made  so  deep  and  last- 
ing an  impress  on  the  parliamentary  history  of  the 
United  States. 

But  mastery  in  these  peculiar  political  arts  was  not 
limited  to  the  Keystone  State.     BrilHant  rivals  were 


ARE  WE  WORSE  THAN  OUR  FATHERS  395 

found  in  the  virtuous  domain  of  the  old  Bay  State. 
If  Pennsylvania  v^as  the  bold  discoverer  of  filibuster- 
ing, Massachusetts  v^as  the  accomplished  and  artistic 
inventor  of  gerrymandering.  The  state  senators  of 
Massachusetts  had  alv^ays  been  elected  by  counties. 
The  general  court  or  legislature  had  the  pow^er,  under 
the  constitution,  to  divide  the  state  into  districts, 
but  that  pow^er  had  never  been  exercised.  In  1812 
the  Jeffersonian  Republicans,  for  the  first  time,  se- 
cured a  majority  of  both  branches  of  the  legislature 
and  also  carried  the  governor;  and,  in  disregard  of 
the  uniform  practice  from  the  foundation  of  the  state, 
they  proceeded  to  cut  the  state  up  into  districts. 
Some  of  these  districts  were  fearfully  and  wonder- 
fully made;  they  stfepped  over  all  natural  lines;  they 
disregarded  not  only  geography  but  geometry,  since 
some  of  them  had  only  one  of  three  dimensions — 
length  without  either  breadth  or  thickness.  They 
twisted  and  turned  in  every  imaginable  way  in  order 
to  secure  a  majorty.  It  is  related  that  the  artist 
Stewart  going  one  day  to  the  office  of  the  newspaper 
known  as  The  Columbian  Sentinel  saw  on  the  wall 
a  map  of  one  of  these  eccentric  districts;  observing 
its  peculiar  rambling  configuration,  he  took  a  pencil 
and  added  a  head,  wings  and  claws  and  then  turned 
to  the  eidtor  and  said,  "There!  that  will  do  for  a 
salamander."  "Better  call  it  a  gerrymander,"  said 
the  editor.  (Laughter.)  And  how  did  he  happen 
to  hit  on  that  name .?  Because  the  governor 
who  had  approved  and  probably  inspired  that  odious 


396  'J'HE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

apportionment  was  none  other  than  Elbridge  Gerry, 
and  so  this  which  we  know  as  so  great  a  political 
offense  derived  its  name  from  one  who  was,  first,  a 
member  of  the  Continental  Congress,  then  a  signer 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  then  Governor  of 
Massachusetts,  then  Vice-President  of  the  United 
States,  and  undoubtedly — I  say  it  in  all  sincerity — a 
distinguished  patriot.  The  poHticians  gerryman- 
dered in  that  day  as  the  financiers  morganize  in  our 
day.     (Laughter.) 

But  Maryland  was  not  behind  Pennsylvania  or 
Massachusetts  or  New  York.  If  Pennsylvania  was 
the  inventor  of  filibustering  and  if  Massachusetts 
was  the  inventor  of  gerrymandering,  Maryland  orig- 
inated and  patented  a  little  political  device  of  its 
own.  It  borrowed  gerrymandering,  but  not  content 
with  that,  it  proceeded  further.  The  state  senators 
of  Maryland  were  chosen  by  an  electoral  college  as  the 
President  is  now  chosen  by  an  electoral  coHege.  In 
1816  the  Federalists  lacked  one  of  getting  control  of 
the  electoral  college  of  Maryland  and  so  of  controlling 
the  Senate.  The  town  of  Annapolis  was  entitled  to 
one  elector  and  it  had  an  Anti-Federalist  majority. 
The  Federalists,  therefore,  determined  to  secure  that 
elector  and  gain  a  majority  by  importing  a  number  of 
fictitious  voters.  A  month  or  so  before  the  election 
a  body  of  strange  laborers  appeared  in  the  town  os- 
tensibly looking  for  work,  but  there  was  no  job  hunt- 
ing the  man  at  that  time  except  a  political  job.  They 
remained  about,  however,  apparently  unconcerned  at 


ARE  WE  WORSE  THAN  OUR  FATHERS  397 

the  want  of  work,  until  about  a  week  before  the  elec- 
tion the  anti-Federalists  suspected  that  some  game 
was  up.  They  penetrated  it  and  fortunately  suc- 
ceeded in  baffling  the  game,  but  that  scheme  intro- 
duced a  new  chapter  of  political  chicanery.  And 
so  if  Pennsylvania  was  the  inventor  of  filibustering 
and  Massachusetts  the  inventor  of  gerrymandering, 
Maryland  put  its  copyright  on  colonization. 

If  there  was  any  scheme  of  political  art  in  which 
our  honored  and  revered  fathers  were  not  consum- 
mate adepts  it  ought  to  be  caught  and  labeled  as  the 
one  missing  link  in  the  venerated  hall  of  antiquities. 
(Applause  and  laughter.) 

But  the  adorations  of  those  days  manifested  them- 
selves in  some  other  ways.  Robert  Morris,  who  gave 
his  entire  private  fortune  for  his  country,  was  allowed 
to  spend  his  latter  days  languishing  in  a  debtor's 
prison.  Edmund  Randolph,  of  whom  Jefferson  said 
that  it  was  his  habit  to  give  his  opinions  to  his  friends 
and  his  votes  to  his  enemies,  was  driven  out  of  Wash- 
ington's Cabinet  on  charges  of  public  and  private 
dishonor,  though  it  is  due  to  his  memory  to  say  that 
the  recent  researches  of  Monsignor  Conway  have 
done  much  to  clear  his  fame.  Timothy  Pickering 
and  Oliver  Wolcott,  who  were  respectively  Secretary 
of  State  and  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  in  the  latter 
part  of  Washington's  administration  and  through 
Adams's,  were  accused  of  burning  the  public  records 
in  order  to  hide  the  evidence  of  wrong-doing.  A  little 
later  the  great  John  C.  Calhoun  said,  when  the  ad- 


398  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

ministration  of  John  Quincy  Adams  came  in,  that  it 
must  be  beaten  at  all  hazards  no  matter  what  its 
measures — a  declaration  of  wanton  partisanship  that 
would  bring  a  storm  of  condemnation  upon  any 
leader  bold  enough  to  declare  it  in  our  day.  The 
administration  of  Benjamin  Harrison  called  a  Pan- 
American  congress  at  Washington,  with  the  ap- 
proval of  the  American  people  of  all  parties,  with 
general  applause,  but  when  the  administration  of 
Adams  took  steps  toward  the  somewhat  similar 
Panama  congress  it  provoked  a  great  party  conflict 
and  Martin  Van  Buren,  with  whose  name  you  are 
not  unfamiliar,  then  a  senator  from  the  State  of  New 
York  and  afterwards  President  of  the  United  States, 
publicly  said,  "Oh,  yes,  they  have  beaten  us  by  a  few 
votes,  after  a  hard  fight,  but  if  they  had  only  taken 
the  other  side  and  refused  the  mission,  we  should  have 
had  them."  In  other  words,  the  opposition  was  just 
as  ready  to  take  the  one  side  as  the  other,  without 
regard  to  the  merits  of  the  question,  and  it  opposed 
the  mission  only  because  the  administration  favored 
it.  I  will  not  undertake  to  say  that  this  principle  is 
not  sometimes  applied  in  our  own  day.  but  I  am  sure 
that  there  is  no  senator  of  the  United  States  who 
would  dare  affront  intelligent  public  opinion  by 
openly  avowing  such  a  code  of  conduct. 

We  are  apt  to  think  that  our  modern  life,  on  its 
social  and  moral  side, hasgreatly deteriorated;  certainly 
it  is  not  without  blemishes  in  spots.  But,  was  the  elder 
day  free  from  stain  .?     The  Due  de  Liancourt  who  was 


ARE  WE  WORSE  THAN  OUR  FATHERS  399 

the  kindliest  of  all  the  early  foreign  visitors  and  ob- 
servers of  this  country,  said,  among  other  things  that 
it  would  not  be  pleasant  to  quote,  that  whiskey 
diluted  with  water  was  the  ordinary  drink:  and  the 
great  William  Cobbett  wrote  that  drinking  was  our 
national  disease  and  that  young  men,  even  little 
boys  of  twelve  years  and  under,  could  be  seen  every 
day  going  into  the  shops  and  tipping  off  their  drams. 
The  earliest  temperance  movement,  so  Henry  Adams 
tells  us  in  his  history,  had  its  cause  in  the  scandal 
occasioned  by  the  not  infrequent  intoxication  of 
ministers  at  their  regular  meetings.  Outside  of  the 
question  of  sobriety,  the  morals  of  the  time  were  not 
without  reproach.  I  am  sure  that  the  tone  of  Amer- 
ican society  was  far  higher  than  that  of  England  or  of 
France  at  the  same  time;  it  was  purer  and  more 
virtuous;  with  some  coarseness,  it  was  in  the  main 
pure  and  decorous.  But  at  the  National  Capitol  in 
public  life,  the  standard  of  customs  and  morals  was  far 
below  what  it  is  today.  Now  it  is  extremely  rare  to 
witness  intoxicated  men  at  the  National  Capitol,  but 
three-quarters  of  a  century  ago  it  was  common,  and 
even  twenty-five  years  ago  it  was  not  infrequent.  A 
more  flagrant  immorality  was  prevalent  and  wide- 
spread and  it  was  so  much  the  fashion  that  there 
were  cases  of  conspicuous  public  men  where  there 
was  the  pretense,  for  the  sake  of  being  fashionable, 
without  the  reality  at  all.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say 
that  the  standard  of  public  life,  so  far  as  morals  are 
concerned,  is  far  higher  to-day  than  it  was  in  the 


400  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

earlier  days,  that  a  more  rigorous  standard  exists, 
and  that  for  offenses  which  brought  no  obloquy  or 
criticism  then,  a  public  man  would  be  now  practically 
ostracised.     (Applause.) 

Now  I  fear  that  in  my  recollections  on  the  past 
you  will  begin  to  think  that  I  began  with  the  wrong 
question  and  that  instead  of  asking  and  answering 
"Are  we  worse  than  our  fathers?"  I  am  really 
propounding  the  question  "Were  our  fathers  worse 
than  we  are?"  Let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I 
share  the  general  regard  for  the  past  and  recognize 
the  grandeur  and  the  greatness  of  the  legacy  that  has 
been  transmitted  to  us, — all  the  greater  because  of 
the  difficulties  under  which  it  was  achieved.  It  has 
been  the  fashion  to  paint  only  the  sunlight.  I  have 
fairly  touched  on  some  of  the  shadows.  To  recog- 
nize the  spots  is  not  to  be  blind  to  the  splendor  of  the 
sun.  My  issue  is  not  with  the  exaltation  of  the  past, 
but  with  the  unjust  disparagement  of  the  present.  In 
the  comparison  I  deny  the  alleged  decay  and  demor- 
alization of  our  times.  Something  of  the  halo  that 
crowns  and  softens  the  mountain  peaks  of  the  past 
is  the  purple  tint  of  distance.  Much  of  the  seam 
and  scar  that  shades  the  present  is  the  effect  of  im- 
mediate contact  and  will  fade  as  it  recedes  in  time. 
The  faults  and  blemishes  of  the  bygone  heroes  are 
forgotten  and  only  their  virtues  remain.  The  frail- 
ties and  the  follies  of  the  living  are  seen  face  to  face 
and  sometimes  cloud  the  virtues  as  the  hand  covers 
the  sun. 


ARE  WE  WORSE  THAN  OUR  FATHERS  401 

There  has  been  the  same  disposition  to  exalt  the 
past  in  other  lands.  Lord  Macaulay  observed  a 
tendency  to  exalt  the  age  of  the  Stuarts  in  compari- 
son with  the  age  of  Victoria.  **  It  may  seem  strange/' 
he  says,  "that  society,  while  steadily,  constantly 
moving  forward  with  eager  speed,  should  be  con- 
stantly looking  back  with  tender  regret."  It  is,  in  a 
measure,  unreasonable  and  unfair  in  ourselves  to  be 
constantly  discontented  with  a  condition  which  is 
constantly  improving,  but  in  truth  there  is  constant 
improvement  precisely  because  there  is  constant  dis- 
content. If  we  were  satisfied  with  the  present,  we 
should  cease  to  contrive,  to  labor  and  to  save  with  a 
view  to  the  future,  and  it  is  natural  that  being  discon- 
tented with  the  present  we  should  overestimate  the 
past.  Macaulay  is  right.  The  world  grows  better 
as  it  grows  older.  Today  is  better  than  yesterday 
and  tomorrow  will  be  better  than  today.  The  ad- 
vance of  civilization  is  the  forward  march  of  both  the 
material  and  the  moral  forces.  If  the  Mount  Wash- 
ingtons  don't  seem  to  loom  around  us  when  we  look 
backward,  it  is  because  we  are  all  up  on  the  table- 
land. The  perspective  is  different  and  the  conditions 
are  different.  Our  fathers  lived  in  the  shadow  and 
the  solititude  of  the  stage-coach  and  the  tallow-dip. 
We  live  in  the  glare  of  an  electric  light  which  illumines 
every  wrinkle.  Our  fathers  lived  in  the  days  of  small 
things.  We  live  in  the  days  of  giant  forces.  We 
have  evils  which  they  could  not  know,  evils  which 
come  with  the  growth  of  wealth  and  population  and 

26 


402  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

power,  with  ring  rapacity,  with  the  evils  of  great 
cities  and  the  conflict  of  great  interests.  But  the 
compensating  good  of  the  day  outweighs  the  evil. 
Never  was  education  so  broadly  diffused,  never  was 
independent  judgment  so  freely  exercised;  never  was 
the  sceptre  of  party  chieftain  or  the  greed  of  party 
convention  so  toned  and  swayed  by  intelligent 
public  opinion;  never  did  bigotry  or  passion,  in 
church  or  state,  exert  so  little  influence;  never  did 
philanthropy  and  charity  spread  so  far  and  wide 
their  mantle  of  sweetness  and  of  light. 

I  remember  that  the  last  time  I  saw  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson,  just  as  I  was  entering  on  my  profession,  he 
spoke  to  me,  with  the  philosopher's  wisdom,  of  the 
dangers  of  hasty  thinking  and  desultory  reading 
which  were  incident  to  that  profession,  and  he  said 
to  me,  "Never  let  a  day  pass  without  taking  half  an 
hour,  if  you  cannot  take  more,  to  read  history."  I 
am  sorry  to  say  that  in  the  exigencies  of  a  busy  Hfe  I 
have  not  followed  the  injunction  as  I  ought  to  have 
done,  but  I  am  glad  to  pass  it  on,  especially  to  the 
younger  men  whom  I  see  about  me,  with  a  hope  that 
they  can  obey  it  more  faithfully  than  I,  and,  as  I  do  so,  I 
recall  that  other  saying  of  Emerson  that  men  who 
read  history  read  unconsciously  as  superior  beings. 
There  are  great  figures  like  Pericles  and  Caesar  and 
William  of  Orange  and  Cromwell  and  Washington 
and  Lincoln  that  march  along  the  highways  of  his- 
tory with  the  tongue  of  inspiration  and  with  the 
sword  of  command;  their  flaming  torch  blazes  the 


ARE  WE  WORSE  THAN  OUR  FATHERS  403 

pathway  of  destiny,  their  lofty  fellowship  enkindles 
and  enobles  the  mind,  and  as  you  tread  the  stately 
corridors  of  the  century  under  their  guidance,  with 
the  wide  influence  of  human  experience  and  with  the 
high  motive  of  great  achievement,  new  vistas  open 
before  the  enraptured  eye  and  you  feel  the  quickening 
glow  of  the  masters.  There  is  profound  inspiration 
in  that  reading  of  history.  But  let  me  tell  you  that 
there  is  a  rich  and  a  rare  communion  in  the  impulses, 
in  the  deeds,  in  the  achievements  of  our  own  day. 
You  are  American  citizens,  proud  of  your  common 
country,  and  will  you  indulge  me  in  a  single  moment 
while  I  point  to  two  or  three  or  four  events  in  the 
history  of  our  own  country  which  show  you  that  you 
need  not  search  the  pages  of  history  for  lofty  ideals, 
and  high  statesmanship  ?  For  when,  when  before 
has  any  government  or  any  nation,  in  all  history, 
after  triumphing  over  another  nation  in  a  great  war, 
instead  of  exacting  indemnity,  actually  paid  consola- 
tion money  as  we  paid  consolation  money  to  Spain 
after  our  great  triumph  ?  (Applause.)  When  be- 
fore has  any  nation  shown  the  magnanimity  and 
the  greatness  to  send  back  the  soldiers  of  its  vanished 
foe  to  their  homes  beyond  the  sea,  as  we  sent  back 
the  soldiers  of  Spain,  at  our  own  expense,  from  Cuba 
and  Porto  Rico  and  the  Philippines  to  their  homes 
in  the  Iberian  Peninsula .?  When  before  has  any 
government  ever  brought  back  its  own  dead  de- 
fenders, even  its  unidentified  defenders,  from  the 
place  on  distant  soil  where  they  had  fallen,  to  be 


404  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

buried  in  their  own  land,  as  we  brought  back  our 
dead  defenders  from  Cuba,  to  be  buried,  as  I  saw 
them  buried,  in  the  presence  of  the  President  of  the 
United  States  and  of  all  his  cabinet  and  of  ten  thou- 
and  reverent  spectators  who  bowed  their  heads  as  the 
last  requiem  was  sounded — as  I  saw  them  buried  in 
our  great  National  Cemetery  at  Arlington  ?  (Ap- 
plause.) When  before  has  any  government  ever 
paid  back  to  a  dependent  people  every  single  dollar 
collected  from  them  at  the  custom-house,  as  we  paid 
back  to  the  people  of  Porto  Rico  every  dollar  they 
paid  under  our  tariff,  to  be  expended  by  themselves 
for  their  own  benefit  ?  When  before  has  any  nation, 
in  all  history,  extended  its  arm  to  uplift  a  down- 
trodden people  and  rescue  them  from  the  thraldom 
of  oppression,  lift  them  up  into  the  light  and  glory  of 
liberty  and  progress,  dower  them  with  all  the  treas- 
ures of  education  and  sanitation  and  justice  and  en- 
lightenment and  then — with  absolute  power  in  its 
own  hands,  with  its  ward  practically  helpless  at  its 
feet — still  faithfully  fulfil  every  pledge  and  plant  a 
new  star  in  the  firmament  of  the  nations,  as  we  did 
when  we  erected  the  free  and  independent  Republic 
of  Cuba  ?  (Applause.)  When  before  has  any  na- 
tion, engaged  in  a  great  international  embroglio 
with  the  Allied  Powers  of  Civilization  against  a 
power  of  barbarism;  insisted,  upon  the  conclusion  of 
the  struggle,  that  the  indemnity  should  be  cut  down 
to  the  lowest  possible  amount,  offering  to  cut  down  its 
own  demand  one-half  if  its  allies  would  do  the  same 


ARE  WE  WORSE  THAN  OUR  FATHERS.  405 

thing,  standing  for  the  reHef  and  rescue  of  China 
against  the  exacting  demands  of  the  foreign  powers, 
as  we  have  done  through  the  last  two  years  in  our 
relations  with  the  great  power  of  the  Orient  ?  (Ap- 
plause.) 

I  am  sure,  my  friends,  that  as  you  contemplate  the 
work  of  your  country  during  these  years  and  these 
events,  and  as  you  see  the  lustre  which  has  been 
brought  to  our  flag  by  the  action  of  our  government, 
carrying  out  the  spirit  of  the  American  people  of  all 
parties,  I  am  sure  that  you  feel  as  that  American 
felt  in  Tien-Tsin  two  years  ago  when  that  great 
struggle  was  on.  The  story  came  to  us  at  Washing- 
ton in  an  official  report.  You  remember  that  the 
allied  troops  were  assembled  in  the  great  Chinese 
city  of  Tien-Tsin  preparatory  to  their  march  on  Pekin 
for  the  rescue  of  the  imprisoned  Ministers  of  the 
various  nations,  and  as  they  took  up  their  line  of 
march  among  the  great  array  of  spectators,  there 
happened  to  stand  two  men  side  by  side.  One  of 
them  was  an  Australian;  he  had  just  come  from  that 
far  off  island,  and,  having  lived  in  that  isolated  place 
all  his  life,  he  was  not  familiar  with  the  uniforms 
or  the  flags.  By  his  side  stood  an  American — 
and,  as  you  understand,  the  American  knows 
everything.  (Laughter.)  The  Australian  asked 
him,  as  the  line  approached,  what  those  uniforms 
were  and  what  were  the  flags  that  were  borne. 
At  the  head  of  the  line  came  the  stalwart  Cossacks 
of  the  north,  bearing  the  flag  with  the  double  eagle, 


406  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

the  yellow  flag  with  the  double  black  eagle,  and 
the  American  pointed  to  them  and  said,  "Those 
are  the  Russian  troops  and  that  is  the  flag  of  the 
Czar."  And  then  came  a  body  of  sinewy  and  stal- 
wart men  from  Central  Europe,  bearing  the  flag  of 
three  colors,  and  the  American  pointed  to  them  and 
said,  "Those  are  the  German  troops  and  that  is  the 
flag  of  the  Kaiser."  And  following  them  came  a 
contingent  of  picturesque  Sikhs  of  India  with  some 
of  the  red-coats,  bearing  the  Union  Jack,  and  the 
American  pointed  to  them  and  said,  "Those  are  the 
British  troops  and  that  is  the  flag  of  the  Queen," — 
for  the  good  Queen  then  reigned  on  the  throne.  And 
following  them  came  a  large  contingent — for  they 
furnished  a  large  proportion  of  the  alHed  army — of 
those  live,  wiry,  agile,  swarthy  little  men  coming  from 
that  power,  from  that  nation  which  in  forty  years  has 
sprung  from  barbarism  to  the  foremost  place  in  the 
East  and  almost  to  a  position  among  the  great  powers 
of  the  world,  and  the  American  pointed  to  them  as 
they  came  along  bearing  their  curious  flag  with  its 
strange  emblem,  and  he  said,  "Those  are  the  Jap- 
anese troops  and  that  is  the  flag  of  the  Mikado." 
And  then,  with  swinging  step  and  proud  air,  marching 
to  the  music  which  we  know  so  well,  came  those  whom 
we  are  accustomed  to  call  the  Boys  in  Blue,  but  who 
wore  then  there  jaunty  kahki  uniform,  and  the  Amer- 
ican, with  his  heart  swelling  with  pride  and  exulta- 
tion, pointed  to  them  and  said,  "Those  are  the  Ameri- 
can troops  and  that  flag  of  the  glorious  Stars  and 


ARE  WE  WORSE  THAN  OUR  FATHERS.  407 

Stripes  which  they  bear  is  my  flag  (applause) — not 
the  flag  of  any  Kaiser,  not  the  flag  of  any  Czar,  not 
the  flag  of  any  Queen,  gracious  and  benignant  as  she 
might  be,  not  the  flag  of  any  Mikado,  not  even  the 
flag  of  a  President,  for  we  know  no  distinction,  but 
my  flag,  the  flag  of  the  individual  citizen,  the  flag  of 
the  individual  sovereign,"  for  in  this  great  Republic 
of  ours  we  are  all  peers  together,  and  that  flag,  with  all 
the  lustre  it  bears  and  all  the  glory  it  stands  for  and 
all  the  prestige  it  has  gained,  is  your  flag  and  it  is  my 
flag,  and  it  is  for  us  to  believe  in  that  flag  and  in  its 
destiny.     (Continued  applause). 


iPouttb  Dinner, 

/Iftatcb  7,  t0O3. 
1:00  p.  M. 

THE  WORK   OF   THE   UNITED   STATES    IN   THE 
WEST    INDIES. 

GENERAL  LEONARD   WOOD. 

This  talk  will  have  to  be  very  impersonal  and 
familiar,  for  I  do  not  make  any  claims  at  being  able 
to  have  any  other  sort  of  talk  with  you.  It  has  been 
and  is  a  great  pleasure  to  be  here  today.  I  have 
been  dodging  coming  to  the  Liberal  Club  for  some 
three  years — (laughter)  not  because  I  did  not  want 
to  meet  the  members,  but  because  I  am  not  par- 
ticularly fond  of  talking  to  large  crowds  of  people. 

I  will  attempt  to  tell  you  something  about  the  work 
in  Cuba  and  how  it  was  done,  but  before  starting  in 
I  want  to  say  that  the  work  was  made  possible  by  the 
very  broad  and  wise  policy  of  President  McKinley,  and 
especially  the  attitude  of  the  Secretary-of-War,  Mr. 
Root.  The  President  and  the  War-Secretary  both 
were  men  who  understood  that  the  work  was  of  such 
character  that  the  man  to  whom  it  was  entrusted  must 
be  given  a  free  hand,  subject  only  to  general  directions, 
and  the  instructions  which  President  McKinley  gave 
me  when  I  finally  went  to  Havana  as  Governor  of  the 
Island  were  characteristic  of  him.  He  said,  "  I'm  going 
to  send  you  down  there  with  full  authority  and  I  want 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  409 

you  to  get  those  people  ready  as  soon  as  possible  for  a 
republican  form  of  government. "  He  said,  **I  want 
them  to  have  good  schools  and  good  courts;  we  want 
to  fulfill  our  promise  to  them  and  turn  them  over." 
Those  were  all  the  instructions  he  gave  me,  and  those 
were  the  only  instructions  which  were  ever  issued. 
They  were  ample  and  the  authorities  at  home  sup- 
ported cordially  the  policy  which  was  inaugurated. 
Mr.  Root  was  directly  in  charge  of  insular  affairs  and 
his  policy  was  one  of  absolute  and  cordial  support. 
He  allowed  no  overriding  of  local  authorities,  and  his 
attitude  was  one  that  made  whatever  we  did,  to  a 
certain  extent,  possible. 

The  condition  of  affairs  which  lead  to  the  war  with 
Spain  you  all  understand.  We  went  into  that  country 
not  only  for  sentimental  reasons,  but  we  had  been  con- 
sidering it  for  a  couple  of  generations  largely  on  the 
ground  that  Cuba,  as  maintained  by  Spain,  was  a 
nuisance,  and  that  she  menaced  our  health  and  kept 
our  whole  southern  country  in  a  condition  of  unrest 
from  yellow  fever.  The  history  of  the  war  is  as  well 
known  to  you  as  to  me.  The  conditions  which  we 
encountered  in  Cuba  were  very  dreadful.  You  have 
heard  a  good  deal  concerning  them  from  the  press,  but 
the  real  difficulties  were  not  in  the  physical  condition 
of  the  inhabitants,  but  in  the  condition  of  inexperience 
and  moral  unrest  which  pervaded  all  the  people.  They 
had  no  confidence  in  themselves.  They  had  never 
had  a  government;  they  had  never  had  a  general 
election;  they  had  never  owned  a  public  school-house. 


410  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

And  it  was  out  of  material  of  this  sort,  which  had 
existed  for  three  hundred  and  fifty  years  as  a  military 
colony  of  Spain,  and  which,  had  among  its  inhabitants 
seventy  per  cent,  or  perhaps  eighty  per  cent,  of 
illiterates,  that  we  were  supposed  to  build  up  a  repub- 
lic. The  work  was  rather  appalling  and  it  had  to  be 
started  from  the  bottom.  And,  strangely  enough, 
the  people  who  were  called  to  do  this  work  were  al- 
most entirely  officers  of  the  regular  army,  and  I  think 
that  perhaps  the  work  done  in  Cuba  furnishes  as  good 
an  illustration  of  the  safety  of  our  army,  so  far  as  its 
relation  to  republican  institutions  is  concerned,  as  any- 
thing can.  I  found  that  the  regular  army  officer  was 
a  most  conservative  man  in  charge  of  civil  affairs,  that 
he  rebelled  immediately  against  any  assumption  of 
arbitrary  authority,  and  that  he  gave  full  scope  to  civil 
institutions.  And  it  was  under  men  who  had  been 
trained  as  soldiers  that  the  Republic  of  Cuba  was  built 
up  and  transferred,  in  a  healthy  state,  in  a  little  over 
two  years  and  a  half. 

The  conditions  of  suffering  in  the  island  were  very 
great  at  the  time  of  our  advent.  Spain  had  always 
looked  upon  Cuba  as  an  island  in  which  she  could 
with  difficulty  maintain  troops.  We  expected  to  lose 
a  large  percentage  of  our  army  in  the  war,  and  on 
arriving  in  the  Island  we  found  conditions  of  disease 
which  was  simply  appalling.  The  death  rate  in 
Santiago,  a  city  of  40,000  people,  was  approximately 
three  hundred  per  day.  We  were  not  able  to  get  ac- 
curate statistics  because  the  orders  were  to  remove 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  411 

the  dead  as  rapidly  as  they  were  found,  and  they  were 
found  almost  everywhere  in  the  city.  I  know  that  in 
addition  to  the  burial  parties,  we  had  to  burn,  for  a 
number  of  weeks,  about  two  hundred  people  a  day  who 
had  died  of  highly  contagious  diseases.  Accompany- 
ing this  condition  was  one  of  starvation  among  the 
people.  We  had  to  provide  for  the  immediate  feeding 
of  350,000  citizens  of  the  eastern  end  of  the  Island,  and 
the  work  was  done  by  sending  couriers  throughout 
the  interior,  telling  them  where  food  could  be  found, 
both  on  the  sea-coast  and  at  central  points  in  the  in- 
terior of  the  provinces.  We  devoted  all  our  army 
transportation  tothedistribution  of  food  andalloursea 
transportation  to  the  same  purpose.  In  fact  the  army 
may  be  said  to  have  laid  down  its  arms  as  soon  as  we 
entered  the  city,  and  it  became  practically  a  corps  of 
reconstruction  and  care-takers  for  the  Cubans.  We 
gathered  the  children  and  the  widows  and  the  sick  into 
large  communities  in  the  different  towns  and  pro- 
vided them  with  such  clothing  as  we  had  available, 
and  gave  them  appropriate  foods  and  medicines.  The 
extent  of  disease  among  them  may  be  illustrated  by 
one  single  instance.  In  a  district  on  the  north  coast, 
when  the  Spanish  troops  pulled  out,  we  found  some 
3,600  cases  of  smallpox,  and  we  had  to  assemble  and 
care  for,  in  one  group  of  hospitals,  over  1,200.  It  is 
rather  interesting  for  those  present  who  do  not  believe 
in  vaccination  to  know  that  a  regiment  of  immunes, 
so  called, — they  were  immunes  until  they  reached 
Cuba,  and  then  when  their  friends  found  that  they  were 


412  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

going  into  yellow  fever  and  smallpox,  their  senators 
decided  that  they  were  not  immunes  and  they  began 
to  notify  Washington  that  they  had  been  enlisted  under 
false  pretenses :  but  eight  hundred  such  men  were  vac- 
cinated and  re-vaccinated  and  shipped  into  this  small- 
pox district  and  made  to  care  for  some  three  thousand 
people  sick  with  smallpox  and  none  of  them  got  it. 
Since  then  I  have  always  felt  that  vaccination  must 
have  some  influence.  (Applause.)  In  addition  to 
caring  for  the  sick  and  distributing  food  through  the 
province,  we  also  had  taken  up  the  establishment  of 
municipal  governments.  The  work  had  to  be  done  in 
a  very  crude  and  oflF-hand  manner,  but  from  the  very 
first  we  attempted  to  give  the  people  representation. 
I  visited  most  of  the  towns  in  the  province  within  the 
first  six  weeks  and  on  arriving  in  a  town  always  assem- 
bled the  inhabitants  and  asked  them  to  send  to  the 
municipal  hall  so  many  doctors,  so  many  lawyers  and 
so  many  tradesmen;  in  short,  to  get  a  representation 
of  all  classes  of  people;  and  when  that  assembly  had 
come  together  they  were  asked  to  elect,  within  the 
next  twenty-four  hours,  a  mayor  and  a  council,  and  in 
that  way  all  the  city  councils  were  elected.  Of 
course,  it  was  a  very  primitive  and  ofF-hand  way  of 
doing  business,  but  we  hadn't  much  time.  We  did 
want  to  get  governments  elected  by  the  people 
and  not  appointed  by  the  military  governor.  And  as 
soon  as  these  city  governments  were  established,  a 
system  of  local  taxation  was  put  in  force.  Very  small 
assessments  were  made  upon  the  different  store-keep- 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  413 

ers  and  the  people  generally  who  were  able  to  pay,  and 
with  the  funds  so  gathered  the  municipality  was 
started,  and  one  or  two  clerks  employed.  The  assess- 
ment records  of  property  had  been  destroyed  by  Spain, 
and  we  were  called  upon  to  make  a  re-assessment  of 
the  entire  Island  of  Cuba,  and  consequently  our  sys- 
tem of  taxation  at  first  had  to  be  rather  simple  and 
somewhat  crude.  I  found  even  in  those  early  days 
that  the  people  were  very  much  interested  in  public 
schools.  We  were  able  to  establish,  in  the  first  four 
months,  something  like  284  public  schools  in  the 
Province  of  Santiago,  and  at  the  end  of  the  year,  on  the 
first  day  of  January,  1899,  we  had  many  public  schools 
established,  we  had  a  condition  of  fairly  good  health, 
there  was  no  actual  suffering  from  lack  of  food,  and  we 
had  accumulated  a  surplus  of  ;^  16 1,000, 00  from  Cus- 
toms revenues,  and  with  that  had  entered  into  a  con- 
tract for  paving  and  sewering  certain  unhealthy  por- 
tions of  the  City  of  Santiago.  On  the  first  day  of 
January  the  whole  island  was  transferred  and  the 
work  still  to  be  done  in  Santiago  was  done  in  the 
eastern  part  of  the  Island  by  General  Brooke  and  by 
General  Ludlow.  The  work  of  General  Ludlow  in 
Havana  was  particularly  fine  work.  He  cleaned  up  the 
city,  established  a  model  city  government,  and  did  a 
most  excellent  and  efficient  piece  of  administrative 
work.  The  municipal  governments  in  other  parts  of 
the  island  were  very  much  of  the  same  order  as  those 
that  had  been  established  in  the  East.  They  were 
elected  by  the  people  without  any  definite  electoral  law, 


414  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

but  the  more  influential  people  simply  designated  the 
temporary  municipal  governments  and  under  those 
governments  the  Island  was  being  conducted.  In  the 
meantime  the  Cuban  Army  had  been  disbanded  and 
gone  to  its  homes.  The  Cuban  orphans,  to  the  extent 
of  perhaps  18,000,  had  been  collected  in  various  parts 
of  the  island  in  large  asylums,  something  over  a  hun- 
dred in  number,  and  they  were  being  fed  and  clothed. 
This  was  the  general  condition  of  afi^'airs  in  Decem- 
ber, 1899,  when  President  McKinley  sent  me  down  to 
the  Island — sent  me  to  Havana,  rather,  as  Governor 
of  the  Island.  The  work  which  General  Brooke  had 
contemplated  and  which  he  had  started  was  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  thorough  school  system  for  the  island, 
and  with  that  end  in  view  a  provisional  school 
law  had  been  drawn  up  and  was  about  to  be  put  in 
force;  in  fact,  the  law  had  been  published  but  was 
not  actually  put  into  eflfect.  Acting  on  this  law  we 
pushed  forward  the  work  of  establishing  schools  and  at 
the  same  time  took  up  the  work  of  writing  a  new 
school  law.  The  school  law  finally  adopted  was  a 
school  law  of  the  State  of  Ohio,  translated  into 
Spanish  and  made  to  fit  local  conditions,  and  under 
that  school  law  thirty-eight-hundred-and-seventy-odd 
schools  were  established  in  about  seventy  days  all 
through  the  island  and  school  furniture  was  bought 
and  the  equipment  and  building  of  school-houses  com- 
menced. We  gave  one  order  for  school  furniture  which 
I  think  is  said  to  be  the  largest  order  ever  given  in  this 
country;  it  was  for  a  hundred  thousand  complete  sets 


UNITED  STATES  IN   THE  WEST  INDIES  41fi 

of  school  desks,  books  and  equipments,  and  amounted 
to  about  three-quarters  of  a  million  of  dollars. 
Most  of  that  material  had  to  be  shipped  to  interior 
towns  and  put  up  in  buildings  which  were  not  built  or 
designed  for  school-houses.  Nearly  four  thousand 
buildings  had  to  be  rented.  The  school-law  had  to  be 
circulated,  all  the  school  forms  had  to  be  put  into 
Spanish  and  distributed  among  the  people,  and 
they  had  to  be  instructed  in  the  use  of  them.  In 
addition  to  that  we  had  to  gather  up  some  four 
thousand  native  teachers, — for  from  the  first  the  prin- 
ciple was  adopted  and  stuck  to  to  the  end,  of  making 
the  Cubans  do  their  own  work,  and  we  began  with  the 
schools.  The  problem  was  not  as  difficult  as  it  would 
seem,  because  all  the  schools  were  of  primary  grade. 
You  see,  there  never  had  been  any  schools  in  Cuba,  to 
speak  of,  except  private  schools,  and  when  we  started 
in  with  the  public  schools  they  all  started  on  the  same 
level  as  primary  schools,  and  with  these  teachers, 
many  of  them  poorly  prepared  for  teaching,  the  first 
year's  work  was  done.  The  school  year  closed  at  the 
end  of  about  six  months  and  we  sent  a  thousand  of 
these  teachers  to  Harvard  University,  not  because  we 
thought  they  would  learn  much  from  books,  for  they 
did  not,  but  we  did  expect  them  to  learn  a  good  deal 
from  what  they  saw  and  heard,  and  we  were  not  dis- 
appointed in  that  particular.  They  came  back  with 
new  ideas  of  sanitation  and  general  conduct  of  civil 
affairs.  They  knew  what  a  decent  house  was  and 
what  modern  sanitary  arrangements  in  a  house  were, 


416  I'HE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

and  they  came  back  with  ideas  of  learning  in  a 
manner  other  than  that  in  which  they  had  previously 
lived,  and  in  that  way  their  trip  was  invaluable.  All 
those  teachers  who  remained  in  Cuba  were  compelled 
to  attend  summer  schools.  We  gave  the  teachers  an 
annual  salary,  a  very  high  salary,  a  salary  that  is  only 
exceeded  in  three  or  four  cities  of  the  Union,  but  we 
did  that  to  get  hold  of  the  best  class  of  Cuban  men 
and  women.  We  didn't  want  to  start  with  cheap 
labor  in  the  public  schools.  One  of  the  conditions 
under  which  they  were  to  receive  their  summer  salary 
was  that  they  should  go  to  a  summer  school  for 
teachers.  These  summer  schools  were  conducted  by 
American  teachers  who  spoke  Spanish,  and  in  that 
way  we  put  all  our  teachers  to  school  during  the  first 
vacation,  and  at  the  end  of  that  vacation  we  had  a 
general  examination  for  teachers  under  which  they 
were  given  one  year's  certificates.  That  examination 
was  very  simple,  but  it  impressed  upon  the  teachers 
the  fact  that  they  must  work  if  they  were  going  to  hold 
their  places.  The  work  of  pushing  the  teachers  for- 
ward has  been  system.atically  followed.  The  next  year 
we  sent  two  hundred  teachers  to  Harvard.  These 
teachers  were  selected  by  competitive  examination, 
and  they  did  very  excellent  work,  as  they  came  back 
well  equipped  to  teach  in  the  summer  schools  of  the 
following  year.  During  all  that  summer  also,  we  had 
over  3,500  teachers  in  the  summer  schools  for  two 
months,  all  hard  at  work.  And  the  result  of  all  that 
has  been  that  the  school  system  has  advanced  remark- 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  417 

ably.  There  is  a  sincere  interest  among  the  people  in 
their  public  schools,  and  if  the  system  which  we  in 
augurated  is  kept  up,  and  I  believe  it  will  be,  they  will 
soon  have  a  thoroughly  good  school  system,  because 
the  teachers  are  going  ahead  at  as  great  a  rate  of  speed 
as  the  pupils;  that  is,  they  are  keeping  well  in  advaned 
of  their  pupils.  In  addition  to  sending  the  teachers 
to  Harvard,  we  entered  into  a  contract,  to  run  for  ten 
years,  which  I  am  sorry  to  say  has  not  been  adhered  to, 
with  the  New  Paltz  Normal  School,  by  which  we  were 
to  send  sixty  teachers  the  first  year,  and  thirty  every 
year  afterward;  the  Normal  School  agreed  to  employ 
Spanish-speaking  professors,  and  these  teachers  were 
to  be  given  two  years  of  normal-school  training.  We  had 
sixty  teachers,  selected  by  competitive  examination, 
and  their  standard  was  above  the  standard  of  the 
school.  Their  contract  was  very  reasonable  for  any- 
body. It  was  at  the  rate  of  ;^3 0,000. 00  a  year,  about 
^500.00  a  head,  which  was  as  reasonable  as  one  could 
expect.  I  hope  that  Mr.  Palma  will  again  see  fit  to 
renew  that  contract  and  maintain  it  until  he  has  a 
well  equipped  corps  of  teachers  who  are  ready  and  able 
to  give  proper  normal  training  to  Cuban  teachers.  In 
addition  to  the  work  of  training  teachers,  we  had  to 
build  school-houses.  We  found  almost  enough 
Spanish  barracks  and  old  Spanish  military  hospitals 
to  supply  us  with  school-houses;  in  fact  we  were  able 
to  convert  these  buildings,  which  were  usually  con- 
structed of  stone,  into  school-houses.  And  to  give 
you  an  idea  of  size,  it  is  only  suflScient  to  say  that  in 

27 


4,18  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Havana,  in  the  second  story  of  one  building,  we  were 
able  to  establish  thirty-three  school-rooms  with  a 
capacity  of  over  fifty  seats  to  the  room.  In  addition 
to  those  school-rooms  we  had  a  large  assembly  hall  in 
which  two  thousand  students  could  assemble — 
lavatories,  gymnasiums,  rooms  for  sloyd,  kindergarten 
work;  and  in  other  towns  we  had  buildings  in  which 
we  were  able  to  put  as  many  as  twenty-two  school 
rooms.  This  large  school-house  in  Havana  was 
equipped  at  an  expense  of  about  ;^io8,ooo.oo,  and  we 
had  there  at  school  every  day,  two  thousand  children. 
We  picked  out  this  particular  building  because  it  was 
in  the  poorest  and  worst  section  of  Havana,  and  we 
wanted  to  reach  those  children  first;  because,  as  a 
rule,  they  were  not  able  to  go  to  the  private  schools. 
During  the  last  year  of  the  military  occupation,  we 
built  schools  at  the  rate  of  one  school  per  day,  ex- 
clusive of  Sundays;  that  is,  one  school-room.  We 
built  three  hundred  and  fourteen  or  fifteen  rooms  in 
the  year,  and  we  put,  in  the  last  two  years,  into  schools 
and  public  education,  ten-and-a-half  millions  of  dol- 
lars. In  other  words,  we  put  in  twenty-five  per  cent, 
of  all  monies  collected  into  the  public  schools  in  Cuba. 
There  were  a  university  and  six  high  schools  or 
academies.  These  institutions  had  been  maintained 
for  a  long  time.  The  university  I  think  is  older  than 
any  university  in  this  country.  I  found  the  university 
with  406  students  and  196  professors.  (Laughter.) 
Those  are  actual  figures.  There  were  professors  of 
Arabic  and  Hebrew  and  other  things,  who  hadn't  had 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  419 

a  Student  for  ten  years.  In  fact  one  of  the  professors 
was  living  in  France  and  had  announced  that  he  would 
return  when  he  had  any  students.  (Laughter.)  They 
held  their  positions  for  life  and  their  salaries  ran  from 
fourteen  hundred  to  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  per 
year.  One  of  the  most  arbitrary  acts  of  the  military 
governor — and  my  decision  was  perhaps  not  good  law, 
but  it  was  sustained  by  the  War  Department — was 
when  I  decided  that  those  were  rights  which  depended 
upon  sovereignty,  and  that  with  the  fall  of  Spain,  they 
lost  their  title.  (Laughter.)  I  used  to  have  the  old 
palace  full  of  superannuated  professors.  I  remember 
one  man.  I  was  coming  in  one  day;  I  saw  a  very 
elderly  man  going  up  stairs  three  steps  at  a  time,  and 
when  he  reached  the  top  he  fell  down  and  we  had  to 
resuscitate  him  by  throwing  water  on  him,  to  find  out 
that  he  was  an  old  professor  who  was  attempting  to 
show  that  he  was  still  physically  able  to  hold  his  place. 
(Laughter.)  After  all  these  gentlemen  were  disposed 
of  we  held  a  competitive  examination  for  reappoint- 
ment, of  all  professsors,  both  in  the  institutos  and  in 
the  universities.  They  all  came  up,  submitted  to  the 
examination  and  a  sufficient  number  were  appointed 
and  the  matter  ended  there.  It  is  only  fair  to  say 
that  the  people,  as  a  whole,  approved  the  action 
taken.  They  realized  that  the  thing  was  a  good  deal 
of  a  humbug  as  it  had  been  run,  and  they  were  glad  to 
see  the  matter  cleared  up.  The  question  of  re-equip- 
ping the  university  came  up,  and  it  was  re-established 
in  the  old  arsenal  on  the  high  hill  which  overlooks  the 


420  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

City  of  Havana,  one  of  the  most  charming  locations  in 
the  city;  the  change  in  buildings  and  cost  of  equip- 
ment amounted  to  something  over  ;^350,ooo.oo  and 
they  were  left  with  good  laboratories,  with  an  abso- 
lutely modern  equipment,and,for  the  first  time  in  their 
history,  able  and  equipped  to  do  modern  scientific 
work.  The  same  was  true  of  the  different  institutos. 
They  were  put  in  as  good  buildings  as  we  could  find, 
and  were  equipped  with  modern  apparatus,  and  the 
school  system,  as  practically  constituted,  of  this  uni- 
versity in  which  the  number  of  students  had  increased 
to  about  800.  There  were  six  high  schools  or  acad- 
emies, and  a  Httle  less  than  3,800  public  schools  in  ad- 
dition. The  number  of  students  enrolled  during  the 
last  year,  out  of  a  total  population  of  396,000  was 
256,000  children.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  256,000 
children  attended  school  during  the  entire  year,  but 
256,000  different  children  were  enrolled  during  the 
school  year.  The  number  of  children  who  were  on  the 
rolls  right  through  the  year  was  about  180,000,  and 
the  daily  attendance  was,  in  round  numbers,  eighty 
per  cent,  of  the  enrollment.  In  addition  to  the  pub- 
lic schools  there  were  a  large  number  of  private  schools 
maintained  in  seaport  towns  by  merchants  and  pro- 
fessional men  who  had  grown  up  in  the  habit  of  keep- 
ing their  children  at  private  schools,  and  I  suppose 
40,000  children  in  the  island  were  attending  those 
private  schools.  So  that  you  can  see  that  in  propor- 
tion to  the  school  population  the  government,  as  trans- 
ferred, had  at  school  a  percentage  of  children  which 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  421 

would  compare  favorably  with  that  in  many  of  our 
own  States. 

In  regard  to  santiation,  our  losses  among  troops 
during  the  first  year  of  the  occupation,  from  disease 
alone,  were  sixty-eight  per  thousand.  Our  losses 
during  the  last  year  were  1.68  per  thousand.  (Ap- 
plause.) As  for  the  death-rate  during  the  last  year, 
we  had  fourteen  deaths,  but  eight  of  these  were 
accidental, — a  number  of  the  men  were  drowned;  and 
only  six  were  deaths  from  disease.  And  the  record  of 
the  army  for  health,  during  the  last  two  years  of  the 
military  occupation  of  Cuba,  was  better  than  the 
record  of  the  army  in  any  part  of  the  world,  at  home 
or  abroad,  and  the  death-rate  in  Havana, a  city  of  300,- 
000  people,  for  nineteen  months,  was,  by  a  very  con- 
siderable margin,  lower  than  the  death-rate  per  thou- 
sand of  the  City  of  Washington;  and  the  same  may  be 
said  all  through  the  island.  We  took  Cuba  as  the 
most  unhealthy  piece  of  land  in  the  world,  and  we 
left  it  as  healthy  as  the  most  healthful  of  our  northern 
and  eastern  States.  (Applause.)  And  it  is  only  fair 
to  say  that  the  work  was  done  without  the  inaugur- 
ation of  any  extensive  system  of  sewering,  or  paving 
or  anything  of  that  sort.  We  .were  doing  very  ex- 
tensive work  of  that  kind,  but  outside  of  the  City  of 
Santiago  it  had  not  been  completed.  And  the  results 
in  Havana  were  obtained  by  simple  cleanliness  and 
strict  attention  to  the  details  of  the  interior  sanitation 
of  houses  and  yards.  You  may  suppose  that  that 
work  was  all  done  by  Americans.     It  was  not.     The 


422  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

Americans  were  at  the  head  of  it,  but  about  seventy 
per  cent,  of  the  sanitary  board  of  Havana  v^as  com- 
posed of  Cubans. 

When  I  v^ent  to  Havana  I  found  a  very  distressing 
condition  of  affairs.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  feel- 
ing about  our  sanitary  inspection  of  houses  and  they 
did  not  like  the  Americans  coming  in  and  ordering 
this,  that  and  the  other — as  was  very  natural — and  I 
decided  to  make  the  experiment  of  putting  a  lot  of 
Cuban  property-owners  and  Spanish  property-owners 
on  this  board.  My  people  at  first  thought  it  would 
not  work,  but  I  told  them  that  we  were  right,  and  I 
believed  that  the  truth  was  strong  enough  to  stand 
alone,  that  we  should  get  their  support,  and  that  it 
would  be  the  best  way  out  of  it.  So  I  put  on  the  two 
largest  house-owners  in  the  City  of  Havana,  Spaniards, 
and  a  couple  of  Cubans  so  that  they  had  a  voting 
majority  in  the  board.  The  Americans  had  a  rather 
lively  time  for  a  few  weeks,  but  at  the  end  of  that  time 
the  sanitary  measures  and  the  sanitary  reforms  which 
we  had  been  working  for  were  adopted  by  the  board, 
and  up  to  the  day  of  the  evacuation  we  had  no  more 
trouble  with  the  sanitary  commission.  And  the 
general  policy  all  through  was  to  make  the  people  of 
the  Island  do  their  own  work,  to  make  them  govern 
themselves. 

Ninety-seven  per  cent,  of  all  officials  were  Cubans, 
up  to  three  months  before  the  transfer;  during  those 
three  months  that  remaining  three  per  cent,  of 
Americans  were  removed  and  at  the  date  of  transfer 


UNITED  STATES  IN   THE  WEST  INDIES  4:26 

there  was  not,  to  my  knowledge,  an  American  holding 
office  in  the  Island.     (Applause.) 

We  found  the  people  honest.  People  have  often 
asked  me  why  I  haven't  said  more  about  the  dis- 
honesty of  the  Cubans  and  Spaniards,  and  I  haven't 
said  much  about  it,  but  I  have  told  a  few  of  them  that 
there  wasn't  much  to  say  on  the  subject, — we  had 
three  per  cent,  of  Americans,  and  that  ninety-seven 
percent,  of  all  the  money  we  lost  they  were  account- 
able for.  (Laughter.)  It  is  only  fair  to  us  to  say, 
however,  that  those  were  the  postoffice  cases,  and 
that  outside  of  those  cases  there  were  no  losses. 
There  wasn't  a  penny  lost  by  any  officer  of  the  army 
or  by  the  civilians  of  any  other  department,  excepting 
in  one  instance  where  there  was  a  shortage  in  the 
accounts  of  a  railroad  owned  by  the  Government, 
which  was  not  of  any  particular  consequence. 

The  work  in  yellow  fever  you  may  be  interested  in. 
I  will  tell  you  just  a  word  or  two  about  it.  In  1899, 
after  we  had  cleaned  up  Santiago  and  thought  we  had 
the  City  absolutely  clean  and  that  yellow  fever  would 
never  return,  we  had  a  most  serious  outbreak  of  yel- 
low fever.  Out  of  fifteen  officers  at  headquarters, 
five  died  in  two  weeks,  and  out  of  four  hundred  troops 
in  the  city,  before  we  could  get  them  out,  one  hundred 
and  thirteen  cases  of  yellow  fever  developed,  and  the 
losses  were  about  thirty  per  cent.  That  opened  our 
eyes  to  the  fact  that  yellow  fever  existed  independently 
of  dirt.  In  1900  in  Havana,  we  had  a  similar  condition 
of  affairs.     Out  of  sixteen  officers  at  headquarters 


424  1'HE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

four  died  in  a  few  days,  and  there  was  a  corresponding 
loss  among  Americans  in  the  city.  Havana  was  ab- 
solutely clean.  Ludlow's  work  had  been  above 
criticism,  and  the  city  was  as  clean  as  you  can  get  a 
town.  All  of  us  began  to  realize  that  we  had  been 
going  on  a  false  theory  in  regard  to  yellow  fever. 
About  that  time  Dr.  Reed,  Dr.  Carroll  and  Dr. 
Lazarre  came  to  Havana  to  study  tropical  diseases, 
principally  yellow  fever.  After  working  seven  months 
— during  which  time  Dr.  Lazarre  had  submitted  to 
being  bitten  by  a  mosquito,  which  Dr.  Reed  believed 
to  be  the  means  of  transmitting  yellow  fever,  and  the 
result  of  this  bite  had  been  a  severe  attack  of  fever 
and  Dr.  Lazarre  had  died;  Dr.  Carroll,  who  had  also 
been  bitten,  had  a  severe  attack  of  fever  and  came 
very  near  dying; — Dr.  Reed  came  to  me  one  morning 
and  said  that  they  had  reached  a  point  where  it  was 
necessary  to  prove  what  they  believed  to  be  a  fact; 
that  is,  that  yellow  fever  was  transmitted  only  by 
mosquitoes;  and  that  he  wanted  money  and  he  wanted 
support;  in  other  words,  he  wanted  to  be  authorized 
to  make  experiments  on  human  beings.  I  told  him 
that  he  could  take  the  money,  and  that  he  would  have 
all  the  support  necessary,  provided  he  obtained  the 
written  consent  of  every  person  experimented  on; 
that  that  person  should  be  of  sound  mind  and  of  full 
legal  age — which  is  23  years,  in  that  country — and 
that  the  consul  of  the  country  to  which  he  belonged 
should  be  informed  of  what  was  to  be  done.  The 
amount  of  money  to  be  paid  was  ^^300. 00  in  gold  to 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  425 

each  person.  After  a  few  days  they  gathered  together 
fourteen  young  Spaniards  from  the  mountains  of 
northern  Spain,  mostly  blonde,  blue-eyed  people,  who 
had  never  been  in  Cuba  before  and  who  were  very  sus- 
ceptible to  yellow  fever.  These  men  were  put  in 
quarantine  foraweek  so  as  to  be  sure  that  they  had  not 
already  acquired  fever;  then  they  were  put  in  a  build- 
ing out  in  the  country,  carefully  screened  with  fine 
wire,  kept  there  several  days  more,  and  were  then  ex- 
posed to  every  possible  form  of  yellow  fever  contagion. 
The  beds  in  which  yellow  fever  patients  had  died  were 
sent  there  as  quickly  as  they  could  be  sent  out;  the 
clothing  which  they  had  worn  at  the  time  of  death  was 
sent  out,  and  these  men  wore  it;  and  many  other 
things  which  I  cannot  tell  you  about;  but  they  were 
exposed  in  every  possible  way.  At  the  end  of  three 
weeks  they  all  left  this  place  healthy;  they  were  all 
well.  Most  of  them,  as  matter  of  fact,  had  gained 
weight;  they  were  well  fed  and  well  taken  care  of. 
The  same  men  were  moved  to  another  section  of 
country,  four  or  live  miles  away,  and  put  in  another 
building,  similarly  prepared  and  absolutely  screened- 
in  from  all  insects;  they  were  kept  there  for  three 
weeks.  The  period  of  inhibition  of  yellow  fever  is 
about  five  days,  at  the  outside;  usually  from  three  to 
five  is  the  period.  They  were  kept  there  three  weeks 
in  order  that  they  might  pass  at  least  four  times  the 
period  so  that  there  could  be  no  consequence  of  fever 
subsequently  developed  having  been  acquired  by 
this  previous  exposure.     They  were  then  all  bitten  by 


424  1'HE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

four  died  in  a  few  days,  and  there  was  a  corresponding 
loss  among  Americans  in  the  city.  Havana  was  ab- 
solutely clean.  Ludlow's  work  had  been  above 
criticism,  and  the  city  was  as  clean  as  you  can  get  a 
town.  All  of  us  began  to  realize  that  we  had  been 
going  on  a  false  theory  in  regard  to  yellow  fever. 
About  that  time  Dr.  Reed,  Dr.  Carroll  and  Dr. 
Lazarre  came  to  Havana  to  study  tropical  diseases, 
principally  yellow  fever.  After  working  seven  months 
— during  which  time  Dr.  Lazarre  had  submitted  to 
being  bitten  by  a  mosquito,  which  Dr.  Reed  believed 
to  be  the  means  of  transmitting  yellow  fever,  and  the 
result  of  this  bite  had  been  a  severe  attack  of  fever 
and  Dr.  Lazarre  had  died;  Dr.  Carroll,  who  had  also 
been  bitten,  had  a  severe  attack  of  fever  and  came 
very  near  dying; — Dr.  Reed  came  to  me  one  morning 
and  said  that  they  had  reached  a  point  where  it  was 
necessary  to  prove  what  they  believed  to  be  a  fact; 
that  is,  that  yellow  fever  was  transmitted  only  by 
mosquitoes;  and  that  he  wanted  money  and  he  wanted 
support;  in  other  words,  he  wanted  to  be  authorized 
to  make  experiments  on  human  beings.  I  told  him 
that  he  could  take  the  money,  and  that  he  would  have 
all  the  support  necessary,  provided  he  obtained  the 
written  consent  of  every  person  experimented  on; 
that  that  person  should  be  of  sound  mind  and  of  full 
legal  age — which  is  23  years,  in  that  country — and 
that  the  consul  of  the  country  to  which  he  belonged 
should  be  informed  of  what  was  to  be  done.  The 
amount  of  money  to  be  paid  was  ;^300.oo  in  gold  to 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  425 

each  person.  After  a  few  days  they  gathered  together 
fourteen  young  Spaniards  from  the  mountains  of 
northern  Spain,  mostly  blonde,  blue-eyed  people,  who 
had  never  been  in  Cuba  before  and  who  were  very  sus- 
ceptible to  yellow  fever.  These  men  were  put  in 
quarantine  foraweek  so  as  to  be  sure  that  they  had  not 
already  acquired  fever;  then  they  were  put  in  a  build- 
ing out  in  the  country,  carefully  screened  with  fine 
wire,  kept  there  several  days  more,  and  were  then  ex- 
posed to  every  possible  form  of  yellow  fever  contagion. 
The  beds  in  which  yellow  fever  patients  had  died  were 
sent  there  as  quickly  as  they  could  be  sent  out;  the 
clothing  which  they  had  worn  at  the  time  of  death  was 
sent  out,  and  these  men  wore  it;  and  many  other 
things  which  I  cannot  tell  you  about;  but  they  were 
exposed  in  every  possible  way.  At  the  end  of  three 
weeks  they  all  left  this  place  healthy;  they  were  all 
well.  Most  of  them,  as  matter  of  fact,  had  gained 
weight;  they  were  well  fed  and  well  taken  care  of. 
The  same  men  were  moved  to  another  section  of 
country,  four  or  five  miles  away,  and  put  in  another 
building,  similarly  prepared  and  absolutely  screened- 
in  from  all  insects;  they  were  kept  there  for  three 
weeks.  The  period  of  inhibition  of  yellow  fever  is 
about  five  days,  at  the  outside;  usually  from  three  to 
five  is  the  period.  They  were  kept  there  three  weeks 
in  order  that  they  might  pass  at  least  four  times  the 
period  so  that  there  could  be  no  consequence  of  fever 
subsequently  developed  having  been  acquired  by 
this  previous  exposure.     They  were  then  all  bitten  by 


428  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

can  shut  them  off  from  their  food-supply — that  is, 
their  source  of  getting  the  poison — they  become  per- 
fectly harmless.  The  average  life  of  mosquitoes  is 
about  thirty-nine  days,  and  if  you  can  keep  the  fever 
out  of  the  island  a  certain  length  of  time  until  all  the 
infected  mosquitoes  die,  it  v^on't  come  back.  The 
explanation  for  yellow  fever  appearing  in  ships  which 
have  been  frozen  up  in  the  North  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  mosquito  hibernates,  as  do  many  insects,  and 
comes  out  again  in  the  spring,  and  probably  most 
cases  of  those  mosquitoes  that  were  sent  to  the  North 
and  again  developed  fever  in  the  Tropics,  could  be  ex- 
plained in  that  way. 

In  addition  to  sanitation — we  found  a  bad  con- 
dition of  sanitary  affairs — we  found  just  about  as 
bad  a  condition  in  the  administration  of  justice.  The 
system  down  there  when  a  crime  had  been  committed 
was  to  arrest  the  man  who  committed  it  and  all  the 
people  who  knew  anything  about  it,  and  they  were 
all  bundled  into  jail  together,  and  held  awaiting  trial. 
The  result  was  that  the  matter  of  being  a  witness  be- 
came rather  unpopular.  (Laughter.)  There  were 
no  fees  attached,  and  unless  the  man  could  give  bond 
for  his  personal  appearance  or  get  some  friends  to 
vouch  for  him,  he  was  simply  locked  up  and  kept  in 
jail  with  the  rest.  When  we  went  through  the  pris- 
ons in  Havana — this  was  in  December,  1899 — the 
condition  was  such  that  a  special  commission,  of 
Cubans  and  Americans,  was  appointed,  and  640  men 
were  released  from  the  prisons  of  the  four  western 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES.  429 

provinces  on  the  ground  that  either  there  were  no 
charges  against  them  which  would  warrant  their  being 
detained,  or  that  they  had  been  held  for  as  long  a  time 
awaiting  trial  as  they  would  have  been  sentenced  had 
they  been  found  guilty  and  received  the  penalty.  One 
man  had  been  waiting  for  eleven  years  and  there  was 
nothing  against  him.  These  are  not  fairy  tales,  they 
are  absolutely  true  statements.  The  judges  said  that 
they  could  not  be  released;  they  said  there  is  no  way 
of  releasing  a  man  who  has  not  been  tried; — but  they 
were  released.  (Laughter  and  applause.)  The  re- 
organization of  the  courts  was  a  more  serious  matter. 
We  found  that  in  the  courts,  as  first  organized, — the 
men  appointed  had  been  principally  men  from  the 
Revolution  who  had  been  lawyers,  and  good  ones 
usually,  but  still  they  were  not  always  fitted  for 
judicial  work,  and  there  was  a  great  deal  of  complaint 
and  a  great  deal  of  mistrust  and  distrust  of  the  courts. 
My  mail  was  burdened  with  complaints  of  people 
about  the  courts,  etc.,  and  the  only  way  that  suggested 
to  me  a  reform  for  these  courts  was  to  keep  a  constant 
and  rigid  supervision  of  all  prisons  and  all  people  de- 
tained. For  that  purpose  a  most  energetic  man  was 
appointed  inspector  of  prisons,  and  was  charged  with 
mspecting  every  prison  in  the  island  and  every  prisoner 
and  filling  out  a  blank  form  which  recited  the  date  of 
the  man's  arrest,  the  crime  with  which  he  was  charged, 
the  date  of  his  preliminary  hearing,  the  date  of  his 
final  commitment,  etc.,  etc.;  he  had  to  do  that  at 
least  once  in  every  four  months.     In  addition  to  that 


430  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

the  various  officers,  including  myself,  made  frequent 
and  rigid  inspections.  The  prisoners  in  the  jail,  for 
instance,  were  all  lined  up,  and,  in  our  presence  ac- 
companied by  the  judge  and  the  jailer  and  the  local 
police  officials,  every  man  v^ras  called  up,  and  if  he  had 
not  been  tried  promptly,  we  found  out  why  he  had  not 
been  tried;  if  there  was  any  good  reason,  all  right;  if 
not,  that  case  was  noted,  and  if  we  found  half-a-dozen 
such  cases  in  a  town  the  judge  was  cautioned.  If  we 
came  back  again  and  found  a  similar  condition  of 
affairs,  there  was  usually  a  new  judge.  (Laughter.) 
There  was  no  interference  with  the  work  of  the  courts, 
but  there  was  an  insistence  that  the  courts  should 
work.  (Laughter.)  And  the  people  soon  appreciated 
that  their  rights  were  being  looked  after.  What 
we  were  trying  to  impress  upon  the  Cuban  people  was 
that  they  had  certain  inherent  rights,  and  that  they 
should  be  treated  in  a  certain  way,  and  we  were  trying 
to  teach  them  to  insist  upon  these  things,  and  as  soon 
as  they  saw  this  sort  of  thing  going  on,  and  that  a 
man's  position  did  not  protect  him  at  all,  matters  took 
a  great  change  for  the  better.  Judges  were  appointed 
carefully,  always  on  the  recommendation  of  the  best 
men  we  could  find.  By  the  "best  men''  I  mean  the 
best  judges  in  position,  as  a  rule, — the  members  of  the 
Supreme  Court  in  Havana,  who  were  all  excellent  men. 
Once  the  courts  were  organized  in  this  way,  they  were 
given  the  fullest  protection;  the  judges  were  then  as- 
sured that  their  position  was  during  good  behavior; 
that  they  could  be  removed  only  after  a  trial  by  their 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES.  431 

peers,  and  all  arbitrary  interference  with  the  courts 
ceased.  But  arbitrary  interference  was  necessary  to 
bring  the  courts  up  to  a  certain  level,- -not  with  their 
procedure,  but  seeing  that  they  proceeded.  (Laugh- 
ter.) There  were  very  few  changes  in  the  law.  I 
shall  always  feel  very  grateful  to  Justice  White  of  the 
Supreme  Court.  The  night  before  I  went  down  to 
Havana  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  dine  with  him,  and 
he  said,  "  Don't  worry  about  any  changes  in  the  code." 
He  said,  "The  Code  Napoleon,  which  is  essentially 
the  Code  which  is  in  force  in  Cuba,  is  a  noble  Code.  I 
have  grown  up  under  it,  and  I  am  very  fond  of  it,  but 
you  will  find  that  the  procedure  needs  a  great  deal  of 
correction  and  simplification. "  And  for  that  purpose 
we  got  hold  of  the  very  ablest  men  we  could  get,  and 
the  work  of  modernizing  the  procedure  was  under- 
taken by  those  men.  There  were  practically  no 
changes  in  the  law  itself.  The  writ  of  Habeas  Corpus 
was  grafted  onto  the  law,  not  only  for  protection  while 
we  were  there,  but  for  protection  in  the  future  in  case 
they  should  lapse  into  those  old  conditions  of  locking 
a  man  up  without  a  hearing  and  letting  him  be  for- 
gotten. But  the  modifications  in  procedure  were  very 
considerable.  The  old  system  of  incommunicado; 
that  is,  of  locking  a  man  up  and  permitting  no  one  to 
have  access  to  him,  not  even  his  lawyer,  for  a  certain 
length  of  time;  that  was  done  away  with,  and  it  was 
insisted  that  every  man  arrested  should  have  his  pre- 
liminary hearing  within  thirty-six  hours,  and  good 
cause  must  be  shown  for  detaining  him  for  any  further 


432  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

hearing  unless  the  evidence  then  developed  w^ere  suf- 
ficient. In  fact  we  perhaps  leaned  almost  too  far 
bacWards  in  our  effort  to  correct  old  abuses. 

The  courts  were  installed  in  modern  court  build- 
ings; free  schools  of  typewriting  and  stenography  were 
started,  typewriters  by  the  hundred  were  introduced 
into  all  the  courts  and  every  effort  was  made  to  sur- 
round the  courts  with  a  certain  appearance  of  dignity. 
We  gave  them  the  best  buildings  that  we  could  get, 
and  we  spent  a  great  deal  of  money  in  equipping  them; 
we  supplied  them  with  good  libraries,  with  good  furni- 
ture, and  believed  that  we  were  increasing  their  own 
respect  in  bettering  the  surroundings  in  which  they 
worked;  for  surroundings,  among  a  Latin  people, 
have  a  great  deal  more  effect  than  they  do  here.  We 
also  established  police  courts.  The  system  in  a  Latin 
country  is  that  there  are  four  courts;  you  have  the 
municipal  judge  who  tries  certain  minor  offenses,  but 
the  important  judge  is  the  judge  of  first  instance  or 
the  judge  of  inquest.  He  is  really  a  grand  jury  of  one. 
All  men  who  are  arrested  are  brought  before  this 
judge;  he  takes  the  testimony  and  he  either  commits 
or  releases.  If  he  commits,  he  commits  for  trial  be- 
fore the  lower  court,  which  is  the  municipal  judge,  or, 
if  it  is  a  civil  case,  before  himself  or  another  judge  of 
his  own  rank.  If  it  is  a  serious  case  he  commits  ht- 
(ore  the  A  uJiencia  which  corresponds  to  your  superior 
court  here.  The  judge  of  first  instance  has  quite  ex- 
tensive jurisdiction  in  civil  affairs,  practically  none  in 
criminal   matters.     The   court   above   is   called    the 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  433 

Audiencia.  The  Audiencia  consists  of  three,  five  or 
seven  judges,  and  they  are  always  in  session  except  on 
Sundays  and  hoHdays.  And  before  those  courts  the 
work  had  always  been  rather  slow  and  cumbersome, 
and  it  was  in  their  equipment  and  in  the  simplification 
of  the  procedure  before  those  courts  that  most  work 
was  done.  Over  all  these  courts  was  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  Island  to  which  an  appeal  was  had  in 
cassation.  That  is,  an  appeal  upon  errors  in  pro- 
cedure, etc..  In  addition  to  the  old  system  of  courts, 
were  established  the  police  courts  in  order  to  free  the 
Audiencias  of  the  minor  criminal  cases,  and  to  free  the 
municipal  judges  of  an  enormous  number  of  small 
cases.  These  courts  were  established  in  all  towns 
where  there  were  fifteen  thousand  people  or  more. 
In  towns  of  a  less  population  the  duties  of  police  judge 
were  thrown  upon  the  judge  of  first  instance.  The 
police  judge  has  a  jurisdiction  without  a  jury  of  thirty 
days  and  thirty  dollars.  With  a  jury,  the  juries  con- 
sisted of  five  men  who  were  drawn  just  as  they  are 
here,  and  were  from  the  qualified  electors.  Our  suf- 
frage was  a  restricted  suffrage.  On  a  mere  finding  of 
guilty  by  a  jury  of  five,  the  judge  could  then  impose  a 
sentence  of  six  months  and  a  fine  of  five  hundred  dol- 
lars, or  both;  but  the  total  imprisonment  in  case  of 
failure  to  pay  the  fine  could  not  exceed  one  year.  The 
trial  in  these  courts  was  oral  and  summary,  and,  as  you 
can  readily  imagine,  an  enormous  amount  of  work  was 
taken  off  the  superior  courts  and  they  were  left  free  to 
transact    really    important    business.     The    average 

28 


434  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

was  brought  down  in  cases,  before  trial,  to  three 
months  and  sixty  days;  in  all  the  cases  growing  out  of 
the  Island,  to  eighteen  months,  which  is  a  remarkably 
low  average  of  time  for  trials  as  a  whole.  The  jury 
system  had  to  be  given  up  after  a  year-and-a-half.  We 
struggled  to  make  Cuban  juries  convict  Cubans, — to 
find  Cubans  guilty  of  cock-fighting,  lottery  and  gamb- 
ling,— and  they  never  would  do  it;  they  decided  that 
that  was  not  one  of  the  duties  of  citizenship  and  their 
decision  was  so  emphatic  that  we  had  to  do  away  with 
the  juries;  we  couldn't  do  anything  with  them;  and 
the  powers  of  the  judge  were  extended,  and  he  was 
able  to  impose  a  sentence  up  to  one  year,  I  think,  of 
imprisonment. 

The  electoral  law,  the  system  of  elections — I  shall 
not  have  time  to  go  over  the  whole  of  this  thing,  but  I 
will  touch  upon  these  points  which  seem  to  be  more 
important.  As  I  told  you,  they  had  no  elections; 
they  had  had  elections  under  Spain,  but  these  were 
elections  in  which  the  candidates  of  the  Government 
were  entered — and  were  elected.  (Laughter.)  There 
was  no  electoral  law  in  force,  there  were  no  voting 
places.  They  did  not  know  what  a  box  for  the  deposit 
of  ballots  meant.  We  had  to  write  an  electoral  law, 
put  it  into  Spanish,  get  up  all  the  forms,  circulate 
them  through  the  island,  for  months  before  the  elec- 
tions, and  send  a  hundred  men,  whom  we  had  instruct- 
ed, from  town  to  town,  to  teach  people  what  the  whole 
thing  meant.  After  six  months  of  pretty  hard  pre- 
liminary work  we  were  able  to  hold  our  first  general 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  435 

municipal  elections.  The  law  adopted  was  essentially 
the  law  of  this  State,  and  the  system  of  voting  was  the 
Australian  system.  The  elections  passed  off  peace- 
fully, and  the  people  elected,  as  a  whole,  were  satis- 
factory. Of  course,  the  candidates  were  mostly  from 
the  Cuban  Army,  as  might  have  been  expected  under 
the  circumstances.  They  had  been  through  a  war, 
and  they  were  the  people  who  were  dominant  through 
that  time.  No  American  officer  or  civilian  was  pres- 
ent at  any  voting  place  or  took  any  part  in  the  elec- 
tions. We  made  these  people  do  the  whole  thing 
themselves.  There  were  some  errors  but  boards  of 
appeal  were  provided  and  the  whole  thing  was  essen- 
tially Cuban.  Americans  were  entirely  on  the  outside. 
We  held  three  such  general  elections.  The  last  thing 
was  the  election  of  the  members  of  the  Cuban  Con- 
stitutional Convention.  The  suffrage,  as  I  have  told 
you,  was  a  limited  suffrage.  The  qualifications  for 
voting  were  that  a  man  must  be  21  years  of  age,  his 
antecedent  record  must  be  free  from  crime;  that  is, 
any  penal  offense;  in  addition  to  those  general  quali- 
fications he  had  to  be  able  to  read  and  write  with 
facility  his  own  language,  or  possess  ;^250.oo  worth  of 
his  property,  or  possess  an  honorable  discharge  from 
the  Cuban  Army,  covering  a  certain  period  of  service 
and  antedating  the  surrender  the  City  of  Santiago; 
that  is,  the  service  antedating  that  time.  The  idea 
was  to  cover  intelligence,  property  and  patriotism. 
We  believed  that  those  were  reasonable  limitations, 
and  they  were  so  accepted  by  the  people,  and  the 


436  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

people  who  were  elected  to  draw  up  and  adopt  a  con- 
stitution for  Cuba  were  elected  under  that  law.  This 
convention  consisted  of  thirty-two  members.  They 
were  in  session  about  eleven  months.  They  drew  up 
and  adopted  a  Constitution  which  in  general  lines, 
follows  our  own,  and  thatConstitution  was  approved, 
and  is  in  force  in  Cuba  today.  They  also  drew  up  an 
electoral  law  in  which  they  provided  for  unlimited 
suffrage,  and  when  questioned  as  to  why  they  had  done 
it — because  I  knew  they  were  all  against  it — one  of 
them  said  that  they  were  going  to  so  arrange  the  law 
that  it  would  amount  to  a  restricted  suffrage,  and  they 
did  attempt  it.  Their  law  called  upon  the  voter  who 
was  not  already  registered,  to  tell  all  he  knew  about 
his  grandfather  and  whether  he  was  self-sustaining, 
and  as  many  of  their  grandfathers  came  from  Africa, 
it  was  rather  doubtful.  In  other  words,  there  were 
many  provisions  in  the  law  which  it  was  impossible  to 
fill  out,  and  they  knew  it,  and  their  purpose  was  to 
disfranchise  the  Spaniards  who  had  become  Cuban 
citizens  under  the  Treaty  of  Paris  and  also  to  throw 
out  the  negro  vote.;  they  had  an  opportunity  to  take 
a  limited  suffrage.  But  I  didn't  believe  it  wise  to  ap- 
prove the  indirect  method  adopted,  and  those  features 
were  stricken  out  of  the  law,  and  they  have  straight 
unlimited  suffrage  until  they  are  ready  to  limit  it. 
The  electoral  law  as  adopted  by  them  is  essentially 
the  electoral  law  which  we  have  in  force,  minus  the  re- 
strictions on  the  suffrage. 
The  general  conduct  of  affairs  by  the  Cuban  Gov- 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  437 

ernment  since  its  transfer  has  been,  so  far  as  I  can 
learn,  most  excellent.  They  are  going  on  in  a  quiet 
and  orderly  way.  They  have  reversed  no  regulations 
and  orders  v^hich  we  established.  They  seem  to  be 
carrying  out  our  sanitary  rules  and  regulations  in  good 
faith  and  they  are  governing  their  expenditure  of 
money  in  a  very  careful  way. 

The  system  of  hospitals  and  charities  I  will  run 
over  very  briefly.  We  found  the  Island,  as  I  told  you, 
over-run  with  poor  people  and  with  children,  thou- 
sands of  them,  everywhere,  without  mothers  or 
fathers.  We  had  to  gather  those  children  up  in  great 
masses  and  put  them  in  temporary  buildings  and  take 
care  of  them.  The  policy  of  the  administration  was 
to  avoid  institutionizing  children.  We  all  believed 
that  it  was  better  to  adopt  the  system  of  placing 
children  out  in  good  families,  under  very  careful  super- 
vision, rather  than  placing  them  in  large  asylums 
where  they  were  simply  united  in  a  large  mass  and 
amounted  to  nothing,  and  when  they  reached  adult 
age  they  were  turned  loose  on  the  world  without  ex- 
perience and  without  ties  of  any  kind.  Consequently 
we  adopted  and  pushed  very  vigorously  the  system  of 
placing  out  children.  At  first  we  had  perhaps  eighteen 
thousand  children  on  our  hands.  We  were  able 
to  place  in  desirable  famihes  all  of  those  children,  with 
the  exception  of  about  eight  hundred  who  were  mostly 
crippled,  deformed,  blind,  or  who  had  something  the 
matter  with  them.  We  brought  to  Cuba  Mr.  Homer 
Folks  of  this  State,  and  he  gave  us  about  three  months 


438  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

of  the  most  valuable  assistance  in  drawing  up  and 
writing  a  new  Law  of  Charities  and  Beneficence,  a  law 
which  was  especially  designed  to  care  for  the  children, 
adopting  this  general  principle,  which  I  have  just 
stated,  to  provide  for  the  care  of  the  indigent,  and 
having  especial  reference  to  the  care  of  the  insane. 

We  found  the  insane  in  Cuba  in  a  very  distressing 
condition.  It  was  not  unusual  to  find  ten  or  fifteen 
insane  people  in  a  httle  room  about  ten  feet  long, 
eight  feet  high  and  six  feet  wide,  just  crowded  up  like 
animals  at  a  menagerie.  They  were  usually  without 
clothing;  their  food  was  shoved  in  through  a  hole  in 
the  door,  and  their  places  were  washed  out  occasion- 
ally. Those  people  were  living  under  conditions 
which  would  have  confirmed  any  temporary  aberra- 
tion. Every  effort  in  the  new  Law  of  Charities  and 
Beneficence  was  made  to  surround  the  insane  with  a 
possible  protection,  and  the  most  severe  penalties 
were  imposed  upon  judges  and  heads  of  charitable 
institutions  or  hospitals  who  did  not  strictly  conform 
to  those  laws.  It  was  provided  in  the  law  that  the 
relatives  of  people  committed  should  always  have  a 
chance  to  have  the  person  committed  brought  before 
a  competent  tribunal  to  ascertain  whether  or  not  he 
should  be  longer  kept  in  confinement.  In  fact  every 
effort  was  made, — and  the  suggestions  were  mostly 
based  upon  Mr.  Folks's  very  wide  experience, — to 
safeguard  the  insane.  So  the  old  charitable  institu- 
tions, which  we  found  scattered  through  the  island — 
for  the  Spanish  law  of  beneficence  had  originally  been 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  439 

a  very  liberal  one,  but  of  course  was  a  hundred  or  two 
hundred  years  behind  the  times; — were  heavily  en- 
dowed, but  their  endowments  were  oftentimes  mis- 
placed and  their  incomes  misused.  And  in  addition 
to  other  work  we  had  a  consolidation  of  the  endow- 
ments of  these  institutions.  In  some  cases  the  endow- 
ment amounted  to  a  million  and  in  some  to  a  million- 
and-a-half  of  dollars,  invested  in  towns,  etc.  So 
that  you  can  see,  that  in  addition  to  other  work, 
there  was  a  good  deal  of  such  work  in  the  department 
of  charities.  As  we  left  the  island  we  left  it  with  four 
large  charitable  institutions,  two  of  them  were  cor- 
rectional in  character,  one  for  boys  and  one  for  girls, 
and  two  were  training  schools.  The  total  inmates 
were  about  eight  hundred.  At  the  reform  school  for 
boys  and  the  reform  school  for  girls,  the  inmates  were 
all  committed  by  the  courts,  and  in  the  other  schools 
they  were  usually  orphans  who  were  sent  for  training. 
We  established  also  throughtout  the  Island  a  very 
good  system  of  hospitals,  one  large  hospital  in  each 
province.  We  brought  to  Cuba  the  best  nurses  we 
could  get  in  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Boston  and 
other  large  cities;  paid  them  large  salaries,  and  es- 
tablished training  schools  for  nurses  on  just  the  same 
grounds  that  you  have  them  here, — a  three  years' 
course  with  a  diploma  granted  by  the  University  of 
Havana.  These  hospitals  were  well  equipped.  The 
average  cost  of  equipment,  it  is  safe  to  say,  was  from 
quarter-of-a-million  to  three-hundred-and-fifty  thou- 
sand  dollars.     On    the   hospital   for   the   insane  we 


440  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

spent  nearly  half-a-million  dollars.  We  left  Cuba 
equipped  with  institutions  having  four  thousand  beds, 
well  equipped  with  modern  instruments,  good  oper- 
ating rooms,  good  training  schools  for  nurses,  and 
with  the  best  physicians  we  could  get — all  appointed, 
as  a  rule,  by  competitive  examination  or  upon  recom- 
mendation of  the  best  medical  men  in  the  island. 
The  number, — four  thousand  beds, — seems  a  large 
number  for  a  million  and  six  hundred  thousand 
people,  but  the  number  was  due  to  the  fact  that  nearly 
all  the  country  houses  of  Cuba  were  destroyed  by  the 
war,  and  the  people  today  are  living  in  little  temporary 
houses  with  dirt  floors,  built  up  while  they  are  re-estab- 
lishing their  farms,  and  they  are  totally  unfitted  for  the 
care  of  sick  people.  The  hospital  conditions  as  we 
established  them,  were  made  very  ample  for  that 
reason.  It  will  be  eight  or  ten  years  before  those 
people  are  able  to  properly  care  for  their  own  sick  in 
their  own  homes. 

In  addition  to  the  hospitals,  the  quarantine  law  was 
rewritten  and  essentially  our  quarantine  law  put  in 
effect,  and  quarantine  stations  were  established 
throughout  the  Island. 

The  customs  service  was  organized  by  Gen.  Bliss 
with  great  ability.  We  had  to  build  revenue  cutters 
and  custom  houses,  and  equip  the  service  in  all  the 
different  ports.  The  cost  of  collection  was  brought 
to  a  point  a  little  lower  than  the  average  cost  of  col- 
lection here,  and  no  money  was  lost  through  the  cus- 
toms service.     Nearly  all  our  collectors  were  Ameri- 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  441 

cans,  up  to  the  last  three  or  four  months,  but  the  men 
who  actually  handled  the  money,  and  most  of  the  em- 
ployes, were  Cuban. 

In  short,  the  government  as  transferred  was  well 
organized  and  well  equipped  and  it  was  free  from 
debt.  It  had  excellent  school-system,  an  excellent 
system  of  charities  and  hospitals,  a  good  quarantine 
and  customs  service.  It  had  a  new  railway  law  in 
which  many  of  the  provisions  we  are  now  struggling  for 
are  embodied,  such  as  the  prohibition  of  rebates,  etc. 
We  found  the  railroad  situation  so  distressing  and  the 
rates  charged  so  arbitrary,  that  the  government  had 
to  come  in  and  regulate  rates;  but  the  regulation  of 
rates  was  always  subject  to  an  appeal  to  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  island,  and  it  was  understood  and  so  de- 
cided that  the  government  should  not  regulate  or 
reduce  rates  to  such  a  point  as  to  amount  to  a  con- 
fiscation of  the  property  of  the  railroad.  In  other 
words,  the  rates  should  not  be  reduced  below  a  point 
— that  is,  reduced  by  the  government, — below  a  point 
which  would  insure  a  reasonable  income  on  the  actual 
value  of  the  investment,  including  the  services  of  em- 
ployes, etc., — with  all  of  which  you  are  more  familiar 
than  I.  But  it  is,  I  believe,  a  good  railway  law,  and 
it  has  been  accepted. 

So  that,  as  turned  over  to  the  Cubans,  they  were 
well  equipped,  so  far  as  we  could  see,  in  most  par- 
ticulars. They  had  had  five  general  elections,  three 
municipal  ones  and  three  for  the  ofliicials  of  their 
general  government;  they  had  no  debts,  and  they  had 


442  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

;^ 1, 6 13,000.00  of  free  money  for  allotment;  their 
island  was  as  healthy  as  any  part  of  the  Union,  and 
their  courts  were  operating  freely  and  had  public  con- 
fidence.    (Applause.) 


President  Sprague: — Gen.  Wood  has  said  to  me, 
gentlemen,  that  he  would  be  very  glad  to  answer  any 
questions  which  any  gentleman  may  put  to  him  in 
relation  to  this  very  remarkable  subject  which  he  has 
portrayed. 

Mr.  Frank  Loomis: — Mr.  President,  I  didn't  un- 
derstand whether  or  not  the  Cubans  now  had  uni- 
versal suffrage  ? 

Gen.  Wood: — They  now  have  universal  suffrage. 
They  passed  a  law  granting  the  people  universal  suf- 
frage, but  they  tied  it  up  with  a  lot  of  conditions. 
For  instance,  as  I  started  to  explain,  they  called  upon 
a  man  to  tell  all  about  his  father  and  grandfather,  etc., 
so  that  a  Spaniard  who  had  become  a  Cuban  citizen 
would  have  to  send  to  Spain  and  get  all  this  data;  it 
would  cost  him  a  lot  of  money  and  rather  than  do  that 
he  wouldn't  have  it,  and  the  negro  who  came  in  from 
Africa  in  the  'sixties  would  naturally  be  a  good  deal 
embarassed  in  ascertaining  whether  or  not  his  grand- 
father was  self-sustaining.  (Laughter.)  There  were 
many  things  of  that  sort  which  were  insincere  and  not 
honest  and  they  were  stricken  out,  and  the  people 
were  given  straight  universal  suffrage. 

President  Sprague: — Gentlemen,  we  have  been 
highly  entertained  by  the  remarks  of  Gen.  Wood,  and 


UNITED  STATES  IN  THE  WEST  INDIES  443 

I  would  call  upon  Mr.  Milburn  to  adequately  express 
our  thanks  for  his  brilliant  and  instructive  address, — 
for  one  of  the  most  delightful  occasions  in  the  history 
of  the  Liberal  Club. 

Mr.  Milburn: — Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of 
the  Liberal  Club,  it  gives  me  a  great  deal  of  pleasure 
in  your  behalf  to  propose  a  vote  of  thanks  to  General 
Wood  for  his  most  interesting  address.  I  am  sure  I 
cannot  do  justice  to  it  off-hand  and  in  a  few  cursory 
remarks.  We  must  all  have  admired  the  simplicity 
and  directness  of  his  speech — a  simplicity  and  direct- 
ness which,  in  my  judgment,  is  the  perfection  of  all 
speech.  (Applause.)  He  has  given  us  a  great  deal 
of  information  which  is  new  to  us,  and  it  is  informa- 
tion of  the  greatest  value  to  American  citizens,  as  it 
shows  us  what  has  been  accomplished  by  American 
talent,  American  genius  and  American  industry  in 
settling  a  disturbed  country  with  law,  order  and 
civilization.  It  shows  to  us  and  reassures  us  as  to  the 
future  of  what  is  likely  to  be  accomplished  in  our 
possessions  in  the  Far  East.  (Applause.)  We  have 
great  problems  to  confront  in  that  region  of  the  world, 
a  great  responsibility  rests  upon  the  American  people 
with  regard  to  them.  Our  reputation  as  governors 
and  as  a  civilizing  power  is  at  stake  in  what  we  ac- 
complish there.  And  for  that  reason,  I,  for  one,  have 
listened  with  the  deepest  interest  to  the  extraordinary 
achievements  in  Cuba  as  inaugurated,  and  we  sin- 
cerely hope  that  the  problems  there  will  be  met  with 
the  same  efficiency  and  the  same  success.    (Applause.) 


444  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

It  is  a  great  pleasure  to  have  had  this  information 
given  us  directly  by  the  man  who  is  most  responsible* 
owing  to  his  untiring  perseverance,  energy  and 
ability,  for  its  accomplishment.  (Applause.)  We 
are  glad  to  be  positively  sure  that  he  really  exists. 
(Laughter.)  We  have  been  told  from  time  to  time 
during  the  past  two  or  three  years,  that  he  was  to  be 
present  with  us,  only  to  be  informed  that  he  could  not 
be,  until  some  of  us  had  almost  felt  that  it  was  neces- 
sary to  have  more  than  the  assurance  of  his  achieve- 
ments that  he  was  a  real  personality.  (Laughter.) 
We  are  indebted  to  the  detective  skill  of  our  officers 
in  having  at  last,  as  we  might  say,  caught  him  on  the 
wing  and  brought  him  to  us  to  give  what  the  President 
has  correctly  expressed  as  one  of  the  most  delightful 
occasions  in  the  history  of  the  Club.  Now  that  he 
knows  us  and  that  he  is  going  to  the  Philippines,  may 
I  express,  on  behalf  of  all  of  you,  the  sentiment  to  him 
that  when  he  comes  back  from  the  Philippines  with 
greater  work  still  achieved  and  with  his  honors  thick 
upon  him,  as  I  know  he  will  come  back,  that  he  will 
return  once  more  to  the  Liberal  Club  and  give  us,  in 
his  own  charming  and  delightful  way,  an  account  of 
what  has  been  done  there  equal  to  the  account  that  he 
has  given  us  today  of  what  has  been  accomplished  in 
Cuba.  (Applause.)  General  Wood,  on  behalf  of  the 
Liberal  Club,  I  tender  you  our  sincerest  and  deepest 
thanks  for  your  most  delightful  and  instructive 
address.     (Applause.) 


Ififtb  2)inncr, 

Obavch  10,  1903. 

OUR   CONTEMPORARY    ANCESTORS    IN    THE 
SOUTHERN    MOUNTAINS. 

WILLIAM  GOODELL  FROST,   LL.D. 

Down  in  Kentucky  we  call  everybody  brother  and 
sister  and  there  I  have  to  begin  a  speech  by  explain- 
ing that  while  I  was  not  born  in  Kentucky  I  propose 
to  die  there,  which  will  be  equally  meritorious. 
(Laughter.)  But,  it  is  a  real  satisfaction  to  come 
back  and  speak  in  my  native  Empire  State.  I 
remember  the  time  when  as  a  small  boy  I  visited 
Rochester  to  see  a  Wide-Awake  procession  in  the 
Lincoln  campaign,  and  when  a  little  later  I  came 
to  this  city  to  hear  Parson  Brownlaw  denounce  An- 
drew Johnson. 

I  am  here  tonight  somewhat  in  the  character  of 
a  discoverer,  and  a  discoverer  in  our  own  land.  It  is 
a  far  cry  from  Roosevelt  back  to  Daniel  Boone,  but  if 
you  set  your  face  toward  the  southern  mountains  you 
can  make  that  transition  in  twenty-four  hours.  The 
southern  mountaineer  needs  a  friendly  interpreter. 
We  hear  of  him  when  he  has  committed  some  homi- 
cide, when  he  has  been  overhauled  by  the  "revenues,'* 
as  the  revenue  officers  are  familiarly  called  in  that 
region,  but  what  he  is,  is  hardly  understood.     When 


446  THE   LIBERAL   CLUB 

you  are  whirled  through  some  suburb  of  his  great 
realm  and  see  him  lounging  in  awkward  attitude  and 
homespun  garb  at  a  railway  station,  he  does  not  look 
either  reckless  or  patriotic.  You  need  to  get  inside 
his  history  and  his  feelings  and  awaken  your  own 
historic  sense  to  understand  and  appreciate  him.  I 
am  his  confessed  friend  and  advocate  and  wish  to 
explain  his  condition  in  our  country. 

Some  twenty  years  ago,  I  took  a  walk  through 
West  Virginia  with  Gen.  Shurtleff  reviewing  the  Mc- 
Clellan  campaign,  as  a  summer  vacation  trip,  and 
there  came  in  contact  personally  with  the  condition 
of  mountain  life.  Ten  years  after,  when  spending 
a  year  in  Europe,  I  learned  by  cablegram  that  I  had 
been  elected  President  of  Berea  College,  in  Ken- 
tucky, I  went  to  the  great  University  Library  and 
got  hold  of  the  United  States  Census  and  there  dis- 
covered the  extent  of  the  mountain  region.  If  you 
can  call  up  to  your  imagination  the  map  of  our  South- 
ern States  you  shall  see  grouped  around  East  Ten- 
nessee the  mountain  backyards  of  seven  other  States, 
— the  eastern  part  of  Kentucky  and  Tennessee,  the 
western  part  of  the  Virginias  and  Carolinas,  the 
northern  part  of  Georgia  and  Alabama, — a  region, 
broadly  speaking,  two  hundred  miles  wide  and  six 
hundred  miles  long,  from  the  southern  boundary  of 
Pennsylvania  to  the  Iron  Hills  of  Birmingham,  with 
great  variety  of  surface  and  climate,  but  all  a  moun- 
tain realm  and  a  country  more  isolated  than  any 
other  inhabited  by  people  of  our  race. 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  447 

Scotland  is  a  mountain  country  but  any  Scot  can 
go  twenty  miles  and  strike  some  arm  of  the  sea;  get 
into  a  boat  and  he  is  in  touch  with  the  world.  Swit- 
zerland is  a  mountain  country  but  it  has  had  its  Roman 
roads  for  centuries  and  even  before  that  the  inland 
lakes.  But  this  vast  empire,  larger  than  all  New 
England,  as  large  as  the  German  Empire  today, 
has  no  inland  lake,  no  seacoast,  no  navigable  river, 
till  recently  no  railroad, — that  is  isolation. 

The  people  there  were  discovered  by  old  Cassius 
Clay  before  the  War;  that  is,  they  were  discovered 
to  be  a  peculiar  people  though  he  did  not  realize  how 
many  they  were,  how  vast  their  territory.  Gen. 
Clay  was  one  of  the  southern  abolitionists,  one  of  the 
slave-holding  abolitionists,  of  whom  there  were 
many.  After  1850  the  southern  abolitionists  were 
driven  out  or  put  to  silence  except  in  eastern  Ken- 
tucky; there  were  more  of  them  there  than  elsewhere, 
and  Mr.  Clay  had  the  virtue  that  the  southerner 
best  appreciates,  courage.  It  was  his  pleasant  cus- 
tom to  go  into  a  schoolhouse  or  a  church  or  court- 
house and  read  a  few  verses  from  the  Bible  on  the 
brotherhood  of  man,  lay  the  Book  before  him;  then  he 
would  read  the  Articles  from  the  Constitution  guar- 
anteeing the  right  of  free  speech,  slap  that  book  down 
onto  the  table  and  say,  "Gentlemen,  I  know  there 
are  men  here  who  don't  care  much  for  the  law  of  God 
or  the  law  of  man.  I  have  arguments  for  them" — 
and  he  would  feel  around  for  his  bowie-knife  and  re- 
volver and  then  he  was  ready  for  a  discussion.  (Laugh- 


448  THE  LIBERAL  CLUli 

ter.)  The  old  gentleman  has  told  me  many  times  of 
his  joy  in  discovering  that  in  eastern  Kentucky  there 
was  a  set  of  men  who  owned  land  and  did  not  own 
slaves.  That  is  the  sociological  status  and  definition 
of  the  mountain  white.  I  have  used  that  term  once 
and  hope  not  to  use  it  again  tonight;  but  some  of  you 
have  heard  of  them  under  that  name, — a  name  of 
scorn,  as  you  would  scorn  the  name  "Buffalo  white." 
But  they  need  a  name.  They  call  themselves  "the 
mountain  people,"  and  that  is  their  distinction  from 
the  "poor  white  trash."  The  poor  white  trash  were 
the  people  who  lived  in  the  midst  of  slavery  and  owned 
neither  land  nor  slaves  and  were  degraded  by  actual 
competition  with  slave  labor;  they  were  compara- 
tively a  slave  people,  much  degraded  really;  while 
the  mountain  man  has  the  independence  of  a  land- 
owner, a  surprising  degree  of  independence,  and  is  a 
survival,  in  spirit  and  temper,  of  colonial  days.  Now 
I  wish  to  explain  why  he  has  fallen  behind  in  the  race 
of  progress. 

Civilization  is  a  state  of  society  in  which  we  each 
have  the  opportunity  of  borrowing  other  people's 
bright  ideas.  (Laughter.)  It  is  humiliating  to  con- 
sider how  few  we  have  of  our  own.  There  are  people 
in  this  room  who  have  ideas  that  are  strictly  original 
with  themselves,  but  the  government  has  provided  for 
those  individuals;  they  have  had  them  patented  and 
copyrighted  and  made  their  reputations  and  their 
fortunes!  When  a  new  idea  is  born  today  in  any 
part  of  the  world,  it  is  flashed  from  ocean  to  ocean 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  449 

SO  quickly  we  can  hardly  tell  where  it  started;  we  all 
become  sharers  of  it.  These  ideas  used  to  travel 
by  sailboat;  they  used  to  travel  by  canalboat.  My 
father's  family  came  from  Western  Massachusetts 
to  Monroe  County,  N.  Y.,  and  when  the  Hudson 
River  was  too  short  DeWitt  CHnton  lengthened  it 
with  the  Erie  Canal.  That  brought  them  the  New 
York  Tribune  and  took  their  wheat  down  to  New 
York.  It  was  one  of  the  greatest  pieces  of  states- 
manship in  our  country's  history;  it  hitched  the  whole 
Lake  Region  onto  New  York  City.  And  so  it  came 
to  pass  that  the  northern  frontiersman  was  never 
cut  off  from  civilization,  the  metropolis.  Our  north- 
ern frontier  always  had  a  back-tier  to  support  it  until 
the  railroad  came. 

But,  in  the  days  that  succeeded  the  Revolution 
everybody  went  West.  No  man  knew, — there  had 
been  no  government  surveys  and  reports  in  those 
times, — no  man  knew  that  Western  Pennsylvania  and 
Western  Virginia  were  not  as  good  as  Western  New 
York.  So  they  were  not  fools  for  going  into  the 
mountain  region  of  the  South.  They  went  West,  as 
everybody  went  West.  They  found  an  abundance 
of  good  land  for  the  first  generation  in  the  rich  val- 
leys of  that  country.  They  took  into  those  hills  the 
civilization  of  their  time.  I  have  traced  the  history 
of  many  a  family, — a  young  revolutionary  soldier 
marries  and  puts  his  household  "plunder"  on  two 
or  three  horses  and  goes  ahead  with  his  rifle  into  the 
mountains  and  settles  in  a  select  spot.     He  takes  a 

29 


4-50  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

dozen  books.  The  years  go  by  and  when  the  family 
estate  is  divided,  each  of  his  children  has  a  book. 
(Laughter.)  Another  generation  rolls  by,  the  estate 
is  to  be  divided  again.  The  oldest  child  has  a  book. 
(Laughter.)  And  in  that  way  the  civilization  which 
they  took  grew  thinner  and  smaller  with  each  gen- 
eration. Take  such  a  man  as  Israel  Gabbard.  He 
went  a  hundred  miles  west  of  the  settled  parts  of  his 
time,  married  a  Scotch-Irish  girl  named  Elsbeth 
McAfee;  they  had  a  good  many  children;  he  named 
one  of  them  Daniel,  after  Daniel  Boone;  he  himself 
was  finally  killed  by  the  Indians.  His  children  di- 
vided up  his  estate  and  they  were  prosperous.  They 
did  not  take  the  public  school  into  that  country,  for 
the  public  school  had  not  been  invented.  They  had 
lived  a  generation  in  the  mountains.  They  became 
shy  of  visiting  their  kinsfolk  in  the  settlements.  There 
grew  up  a  prejudice  and  a  mutual  distrust  and  re- 
pulsion between  the  slave-holders  of  the  seacoast  and 
the  mountain  men  who  were  not  slave-holders.  The 
social  barrier  became  as  high  as  the  mountain  bar- 
rier. The  first  generation  lost  reading;  the  next 
generation  lost  property;  they  had  used  up  the  valley 
land,  they  were  obliged  to  take  poorer  land  on  the 
steep  slopes  and  the  thin  soil  of  the  high  mountains. 
They  ceased  to  be  as  prosperous  as  they  had  been. 
Perhaps  the  survivor  of  that  next  generation  is  Pales- 
tine Gabbard  who  is  now  keeping  a  moonshine  still, 
a  man  eighty  years  old,  well  up  on  Hell-for-Sartin' 
Creek.     That  is  a  real  creek,  but  when  they  estab-' 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  451 

lished  a  postoffice  on  it  the  government  refused  to 
adopt  the  name.  Palestine's  son,  Budd  Gabbard, 
went  down  the  Ohio  River  on  a  raft  of  logs  in  1861 
and  found  there  was  a  war  going  on.  He  enjoyed 
fighting,  was  a  fine  shot  and  enlisted.  He  was  an 
uncomfortable  soldier  in  camp  but  he  made  a  splendid 
bummer  in  Sherman's  march  to  the  sea.  And  he 
came  back  after  the  Civil  War  with  larger  ideas  than 
his  father  or  his  grandfather  had  ever  had.  When 
the  public  school  system  was  set  up  he  became  a 
school  trustee.  At  first  he  united  with  the  other 
trustees  in  selling  the  district  to  the  highest  bidder 
and  pocketing  the  proceeds.  By  and  by  one  of  our 
students  taught  in  the  neighboring  district.  They 
had  so  much  interest  there  that  Budd  conceived  the 
idea  of  having  a  sure-enough  teacher  in  his  district. 
Then  he  thought  he  would  have  his  own  daughter, 
Serepta,  educated  so  that  she  could  teach,  and  he 
decided  he  would  raise  some  extra  swine  so  that  he 
could  send  a  daughter  to  school.  Then  there  was  a 
disease  among  the  swine  and  the  whole  matter  went 
over  for  a  year.  The  next  year  Serepta  was  fifteen 
years  old  and  a  lot  of  young  men  were  "  talking  to  her, 
right  peart."  Then  when  Mrs.  Yocum  was  out  giving 
Bible  readings  and  inspecting  schools  and  her  horse 
cast  a  shoe  near  Budd  Gabbard's  cabin,  she  was  in- 
vited in,  staid  all  night,  and  Serepta  made  up  her 
mind  she  would  go  to  school.  Now,  this  daughter 
of  Budd  the  Union  soldier,  Palestine  the  moonshiner, 
Daniel  the  Indian  fighter  and  Israel  the  Revolutionary 


452  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

soldier,  is  very  unconscious  of  her  pedigree;  but  she 
rides  into  Berea  on  a  big  bay  horse  with  a  younger 
brother  on  behind  to  go  back  with  the  horse,  a  hot  fall 
day,  wearing  a  sun-bonnet  and  woollen  mitts  as  a 
tribute  to  conventionality.  She  will  be  a  joy  and  a 
problem  to  her  teachers.     (Laughter.) 

Now,  this  life  of  isolation,  you  cannot  realize  it 
till  you  have  ridden  with  me  a  hundred  miles  up  and 
down  the  beds  of  streams.  That  is  the  highway. 
You  get  direction  for  going  from  one  county-seat 
to  another  and  you  go  up  the  middle  fork  of  the  Ken- 
tucky River,  turn  off  the  second  branch  to  the  right, 
the  third  creek  to  the  left  and  go  to  the  headwaters, 
then  go  over  the  divide  and  strike  the  headwaters 
of  another  stream, — so  you  go.  By  the  roadside, 
by  the  bridle  path-side,  by  the  creek-side,  is  the  log- 
cabin.  When  the  young  folks  begin,  it  is  a  little  blind 
log-cabin.  After  the  first  year  they  cut  out  a  win- 
dow; after  they  have  a  parcel  of  children  they  will 
build  another  log-cabin  ten  feet  off  and  spread  the 
roof  from  one  to  the  other.  That  makes  the  double 
log-cabin,  the  Virginia  log-house,  the  first  type  of  the 
American  architecture,  with  its  horizontal  pillars. 
Back  of  it  are  the  cornfields  so  precipitous  they  must 
prop  the  pumpkins  in  the  autumn,  and  every  now 
and  then  you  meet  a  citizen  who,  with  a  solemn  face, 
tells  you  he  has  been  lame  every  since  he  fell  out  of 
his  cornfield.  (Laughter.)  And  if  the  children  of 
that  cabin  wish  to  see  the  world  they  have  only  the 
option  of  going  up    stream  or    down    stream  where 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  453 

they  will  see  other  cabins  and  cornfields  like  their  own. 

Now,  we  have  a  fresh-air  fund  for  the  children  of  the 
cities  so  that  they  shall  know  the  country.  We  need 
a  fresh-idea  fund  for  these  children  of  solitude.  This 
life  of  isolation  is  a  life  of  deprivation.  I  remember 
the  first  time  I  rode  into  the  hills  with  my  wife.  We 
stopped  fifteen  or  eighteen  miles  from  home  and  Mrs. 
Frost  was  curious  to  know  whether  the  woman  of  that 
house  would  ever  appear  again  and  whether  she  came 
to  Berea  to  trade,  or  went  to  Richmond,  our  county- 
seat.  She  said,  "Why,  my  good  woman,  when  you 
can*t  get  what  you  need  down  at  this  little  store 
down  at  the  branch,  where  do  you  go  ?"  The  moun- 
tain woman  smiled  and  said,  "  I  go  without."  (Laugh- 
ter.) And  it  appeared  that  she  had  never  been  to  a 
town  or  city  in  her  life.  It  was  too  great  an  under- 
taking to  mount  her  horse,  take  a  child  behind,  a 
basket  of  eggs  or  chicken  on  one  arm,  hold  an  um- 
brella and  ride  seven  miles.  Some  women  do  it.  I 
have  known  Berea  women  to  come  thirty  miles  to  get 
a  piece  of  iron  as  big  as  your  finger  with  which  to 
mend  a  loom.  We  find  people  burning  kerosene 
lamps  without  chimneys, — a  barbarous  thing;  but 
with  a  little  more  consideration  we  realize  that  it  is  a 
very  delicate  matter  to  carry  a  lamp  chimney  on  horse- 
back over  twenty  miles  of  road  and  we  conclude  that 
if  we  lived  where  they  do  we  should  live  a  good  deal 
as  they  do. 

But  we  do  not  pity  them  for  the  lack  of  lamp  chim- 
neys as  we  do  for  the  lack  of  some  other  means  of 


454  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

illumination  like  schools  and  churches.  There  they 
are  sadly  behind.  I  am  in  the  habit  of  saying  that 
these  people  are  not  a  degraded  people, — they  are 
people  not  yet  graded  up.  But  they  are  degraded  in 
this:  they  have  lost  the  great  idea  that  a  preacher 
must  be  an  educated  man.  Two  of  our  northern 
students  are  carrying  on  a  mission  Sunday-school  four 
miles  from  Berea.  Once  a  month  a  white  man  comes 
there  to  preach.  The  boys  told  him  that  his  next 
appointment  would  fall  on  Easter  Sunday.  He 
was  too  proud  to  ask  what  Easter  meant.  But  he 
went  home,  turned  the  leaves  of  his  Bible  and  came 
up  to  the  appointed  time  with  a  sermon  on  Queen 
Esther.  (Laughter.)  I  am  an  honorary  member 
of  several  associations  of  preachers  of  just  that  stripe. 
I  try  to  be  brotherly  and  help  them.  They  are  in  a 
very  embarrassing  position.  They  have  come  to  the 
point  where  the  school  teacher  knows  more  than 
they  do,  and  they  have  either  got  to  get  this  new 
larnin',  these  new,  high-heeled  notions,  or  else  they  Ve 
got  to  fight  it  out.  Some  of  them  take  one  horn  of 
the  dilemma  and  some  the  other  and  it  is  rather 
difficult  either  way.  There  are  no  Protestant  people 
in  the  world  so  destitute  of  good  religious  guides  and 
instructors,  although  they  are  a  deeply  religious  people 
with  a  great  reverence  for  good  things. 

When  we  come  to  understand  them  closely  and 
intimately  we  see  that  they  are  leading  a  life  of  sur- 
vivals. You  note  it  first  in  their  speech — Shakes- 
pearean words  that  we  have  dropped.  The  past  tense 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  455 

of  '*help"  in  the  mountains  is  "holp"  as  you  find  it 
in  the  old  version  of  the  psalms.  The  past  tense  of 
"drag"  is  "drug."  The  plural  of  "post"  is  "postes.** 
We  ride  up  to  a  mountain  cabin,  and  it  is  good  form 
to  wait  outside  the  fence  and  hello  to  the  man  of  the 
house;  he  comes  to  the  door  and  calls  off  his  dog  and 
says,  "Howd'ye,  strangers.?  Light  and  hitch  your 
beast-es."  They  use  the  word  "poke"  for  "bag." 
A  *'pig  in  a  poke"  means  a  pig  in  a  bag.  I  didn't 
know  that  until  I  went  to  Kentucky.  They  use  the 
word  "pack"  for  "carry."  Prince  Henry  says  to 
FalstafF,  if  you  remember,  "Come  pack  your  boot 
nobly  on  your  back."  We  say  to  a  mountain  man, 
"  Have  you  a  well  here  .? "  ''No,  we  hain't  got  no  dug 
spring;  we  pack  out  water  from  up  the  valley." 
Some  of  our  ambitious  students  have  sent  in  over 
a  hundred  words  of  this  kind  that  have  been  published 
in  the  English  "Dialect  Dictionary." 

Still  more  surprising  is  the  survival  of  the  old 
English  ballads.  We  find  women  who  cannot  read, 
whose  mothers  and  grandmothers  could  not  read, 
who  can  sing  to  you  'Barbara  Allen."  The  hero, 
instead  of  coming  out  of  the  west  country  comes  out 
of  the  western  states;  but  when  he  dies  he  is  buried 
under  a  yew  tree,  although  none  of  them  know  what  a 
yew  tree  is.  These  ballads,  whose  scenes  are  laid  in 
circumstances  of  English  town  life  that  they  have 
never  known,  are  most  interesting.  Now  and  then 
the  mountain  bard  will  stop  to  explain  to  me  the 
ballad  he  is  singing, — "Stranger,  a  'steed'  means  a 


456  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

horse-critter."  (Laughter.)  Then  there  is  the 
literature  of  the  illiterate.  There  are  certain  jokes 
and  stories  and  narratives  that  are  always  related  in 
the  same  form.  I  heard  a  mountain  preacher  use  this 
fine  thing:  "You  can't  help  a-havin'  bad  thoughts 
come  into  your  head,  but  you  hain't  no  necessity  for 
to  set  'em  a-cheer."  (Laughter).  I  took  that 
down,  I  spoke  of  it  in  a  ministers'  meeting  in  New 
York  City.  An  aged  man  there  who  had  been  born 
in  England,  said  that  he  had  heard  that  same  thing  in 
England  when  he  was  a  boy.  Now,  that  is  an  un- 
printed  piece  of  literature,  a  story  that  in  its  particular 
form,  a  jest,  has  been  passed  from  mouth  to  mouth 
among  these  unlettered  people. 

Then  there  is  the  survival  of  the  colonial  arts — I 
love  a  sun-bonnet — the  colonial  arts  and  fashions.  A 
sun-bonnet  doesn't  hold  up  its  hand  like  a  modern 
hat  and  say  "Look  at  me!"  If  you  want  to  see  the 
face  of  the  wearer  you  must  watch,  you  must  get  just 
the  right  angle,  and  then  it  will  reveal  a  face  pro- 
tected like  the  heart  of  a  violet.  And  the  wearer  can 
spin  and  dye  and  weave.  Mrs.  Candace  Wheeler,  of 
New  York  City,  a  leader  of  fashions  there  in  many 
ways,  made  a  journey  to  Berea  to  study  dye-stuffs. 
And  this  spinning  is  something  to  stand  in  awe  of. 
None  of  our  wives  and  sweethearts  can  spin.  Our 
mothers  had  forgotten  the  art,  but  our  grandmothers 
and  our  fore-mothers  for  countless  generations  were 
spinners.  This  had  something  to  do  with  the  making 
of  the  English  race.     Our  girls  have  delicate  fingers 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  457 

today  for  china-painting  and  piano-playing,  because 
of  the  generations  that  have  twirled  the  thread.  We 
are  encouraging  these  people  to  keep  there  fireside 
industries  up.  They  are  adapted  to  their  present 
state  of  civilization.  They  are  a  great  resource  in 
the  long  winter  when  the  people  are  shut  up;  when 
those  streams  that  are  their  roadbeds  have  risen  and 
the  people  have  to  stay  at  home,  it  is  a  great  thing  for 
them  to  have  something  to  do.  I  brought  a  number 
of  their  textile  products  North  some  years  ago  just  to 
prove  that  women  who  cannot  read,  who  have  these 
arts,  this  skill,  this  taste,  this  industry,  are  not  to  be 
despised.  Immediately  there  sprang  up  a  demand 
for  that  kind  of  thing.  I  promised  my  friends  to 
provide  a  certain  number  of  these  bed-covers  and 
yards  of  homespun  and  linen.  When  I  went  home 
and  spoke  to  the  mountain  people  about  it,  they  said, 
"Well,  President,  if  you  are  going  to  furnish  any  more 
than  enough  for  our  own  folks,  we  shall  have  to  raise 
some  more  sheep  first."  (Laughter.)  But  they 
have  raised  the  sheep  and  we  are  beginning  to  send 
North  quite  a  considerable  product  of  these  native 
looms,  these  surviving  colonial  arts. 

So  we  find  them  a  hospitable,  religious,  patriotic 
and  truthful  people,  and,  in  a  word,  they  are  our 
contemporary  ancestors.  We  look  upon  them  with 
some  consideration  and  complacency  and  filial  feeling. 
Even  their  killings  are  an  honest  survival.  The 
high  value  that  we  set  on  human  life,  gentlemen,  is  a 
very  modern   sentiment.     It  did  not  spoil   the  ap- 


458  "^HE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

petite  of  Henry  VIII.  to  have  seen  a  man  executed 
before  breakfast,  not  a  bit;  and  the  mountain  man 
doesn't  think  much  of  killing  his  neighbor,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  he  does  not  object  to  being  killed 
himself!  You  meet  a  fellow  coming  along  the  road 
with  a  gun  cocked,  his  oldest  son  following  a  few  rods 
behind  with  another  gun.  "Why,  what  does  this 
mean?  What  are  you  looking  for?"  "Ike  Garvin 
has  give  me  notice.  And  now  if  Ike  gets  me  the  boy 
will  get  him,  and  if  Ike  gets  the  boy  77/  get  him. 
See?"  and  with  a  pleasant  smile  he  passes  on  ex- 
pecting that  he  or  the  boy  will  be  shot  in  a  few  min- 
utes, but  he  is  going  to  get  his  enemy,  and  he  goes  in 
the  temper  of  a  football  player  wholly  wrapped  up  in 
his  interest  in  the  game.  (Laughter )  You  will 
notice  that  their  homicides  are  never  performed  for 
purposes  of  reward.  Surveyors  in  that  region  leave 
their  tools  out  over  night  and  find  them  in  the  morn- 
ing; doors  are  unlocked  in  our  village.  I  feel  myself 
as  safe  in  any  of  those  places  as  I  do  on  your  own 
streets  here, — any  man  whose  business  is  known. 
You  go  into  the  mountains  and  they  will  say, — "Who 
are  you  ?  What  is  your  business  ?  Where  did  you 
stay  last  night?  Where  are  you  going?  Are  you 
married  or  single  ?  How  many  children  have  you 
got?'*  You  tell  them  all  those  things  and  then  you 
are  one  of  them,  and  men  who  have  been  running 
from  the  sheriff  have  slept  on  the  floor  to  give  me  a 
bed,  and  gotten  up  in  the  night  to  help  me  to  my 
next  appointment.     That  is  a  phase  of  hospitality. 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  459 

I  am  inquiring  often,  if  I  am  traveling  on  a  new  road, 
for  a  good  lodging  place,  and  they  say,  "You  turn 
that  next  creek  up  there  and  you'll  find  Sam  some- 
body; he'll  protect  you."  "Protect"  is  the  word 
that  they  unconsciously  use  for  "entertain." 

Well,  this  is  not  an  extenuation  of  bloodshed,  but 
we  must  remember  that  the  whole  South  and  the  gen- 
tlemen of  the  South,  in  a  large  degree,  carry  arms 
today,  just  in  the  spirit  in  which  the  gentlemen  of  the 
time  of  Queen  Elizabeth  carried  swords.  The  gen- 
tleman of  the  Elizabethan  period  felt  that  the  gov- 
ernment was  to  protect  him  from  the  Spaniards  and 
the  French,  and  from  the  outside  world,  but  that  he 
was  to  protect  his  honor  and  household  with  his  own 
right  arm.  And  it  is  in  that  spirit  that  the  South 
very  largely  carries  arms  today,  and  our  mountain 
people  especially;  and  with  them  the  blood-feud  of 
old  Scotland  was  revived  in  Civil  War  time, — it  ex- 
isted before  that, — it  has  never  fully  died  out  in  that 
solitary  region. 

This  valiant  temper  was  turned  to  good  account  in 
war  time.  Everybody  had  forgotten  that  there  were 
such  people  there,  except  Mr.  Lincoln.  The  South- 
ern leaders  fully  expected  that  when  the  Southern 
States  went  into  the  Rebellion  the  mountain  ends 
would  go  with  them.  Only  last  week  in  New  York 
City  I  met  a  Southerner  who  said,  "Those  mountain 
people  are  no  account.  They  are  all  descended  from 
convicts  and  nondescript  characters."  Now,  that 
was  a  despising  of  the  mountain  people  which  does 


460  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

them  wrong.  There  were  a  few  ship-loads  of  con- 
victs who  came  to  this  country,  but  they  were  most 
V  of  them  convicted  for  not  attending  the  Estabhshed 
Church!  (Laughter.)  In  the  time  of  the  Restora- 
tion Cromwell's  soldiers  came  to  this  country  in  ship- 
loads and  were  called  convicts.  They  were  an  inde- 
pendent-spirited people.  They  have  on  the  whole 
the  same  names,  the  same  legends,  the  same  history 
as  those  who  went  to  the  more  favored  parts  of  the 
country,  and  if  the  scions  of  the  people  who  settled  in 
blue-grassed  Western  New  York  had  gone  instead  to 
West  Virginia,  they  would  be  groping  in  those  moun- 
tains today. 

The  Confederacy  sold  its  bonds  in  England  partly 
by  the  exhibition  of  a  map  of  this  country  in  which 
they  showed  how  easy  a  thing  it  was  to  be  for  them 
to  send  an  army  from  Wheeling,  W.  Va.,  to  Cleve- 
land, O.,  and  cut  the  North  in  two.  The  North  was 
in  the  shape  of  a  dumb-bell;  New  England  was  one  of 
the  bulbs,  the  Northwest  was  the  other  and  Ohio 
was  the  handle.  They  sent  Gen.  Garnett  to  do  that 
little  piece  of  work.  He  was  a  West  Pointer  and 
a  classmate  of  McClellan.  He  started  from  Rich- 
mond with  flying  colors,  but  when  he  got  into  the 
mountains  he  found  himself  on  hostile  territory. 
The  mountain  men  burned  his  bridges,  took  informa- 
tion to  the  enemy,  and  he  himself  fell  pierced  by 
a  bullet  from  a  mountain  riflle.  He  never  got  to 
Wheeling  to  begin  his  march  on  Cleveland.  And 
just  at  the  outset  of  the  Civil  War  the  mountain  men 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS'  461 

rose  and  made  West  Virginia  secede  from  secession. 
They  held  Kentucky  in  the  Union.  (Applause.) 
Those  of  you  who  are  old  enough  remember  the 
thrilling  times  in  East  Tennessee  They  didn't 
hold  Tennessee  in  the  Union,  but  they  held  East 
Tennessee  in  the  Union.  Carl  Schurz  told  me  that 
he  enlisted  Union  men  as  far  south  as  the  mountains 
of  Alabama,  whole  regiments  there,  enlisted  not  as 
Alabama  troops,  but  as  United  States  regiments. 
And  so  it  was  that  that  whole  region  in  the  heart  of 
the  South  was  loyal  and  put  180,000  men  into  the 
ranks  that  followed  the  old  flag.  (Applause.)  Now, 
that  was  a  great  make-weight  in  the  scales  of  the 
Civil   War. 

I  don't  allow  that  these  people  are  ignorant.  They 
are  uninformed.  The  word  '* ignorance"  has  a 
halo  of  disgrace  about  it.  In  the  North  it  means  the 
despising  of  learning,  it  means  the  neglecting  of  op- 
portunities, and  it  should  not  be  applied  to  the  moun- 
taineer. I  would  paraphrase  the  word,  rather,  and 
say  they  are  not  ignorant,  but,  like  the  patriarchs, 
are  unaware  of  the  distinctive  features  of  modern 
life. 

For  example,  a  girl  came  to  Berea  not  many  years 
ago  who  had  never  seen  a  gate.  You  could  find 
young  ladies  perhaps  in  this  city  who  has  never  seen  a 
pair  of  bars.  But  this  girl  distinguished  herself  by 
climbing  over  the  President's  front  fence  right  by  the 
gate,  because  she  didn't  know  what  the  gate  was  for! 
That  is  an  example  of  a  kind  of  lack  of  information 


/ 


462  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

that  we  can  smile  at,  but  which  we  cannot  despise. 
That  girl  became  a  competent  teacher.  She  wasn't 
to  blame  for  not  knowing  that  which  was  beyond 
her  limited  experience. 

Now,  Berea  having  been  started  before  the  war,  by 
Cassius  M.  Clay  and  John  G.  Fee,  a  stronghold  of 
anti-slavery  sentiment  and  free  speech,  of  course,  was 
suspended  during  the  Civil  War  and  had  been  with- 
out a  president  for  many  years  when  I  was  called  there 
in  1893,  ten  years  ago.  I  found  that  it  had  been 
forgotten — that  it  was  like  the  Irishman's  pig,  little 
but  old.  There  was  a  good  plant  of  buildings  for  a 
school  of  three  hundred  students  and  the  school  had 
had  the  confidence  of  the  mountain  people.  But  I 
had  at  once  to  undertake  the  great  work  of  develop- 
ing. I  came  back  from  Germany  with  a  revelation 
of  what  ought  to  be  done  for  the  people  of  these  eight 
States.  This  region,  which  I  am  calling  Appalachian 
America,  is  one  of  the  grand  divisions  of  the  Conti- 
nent. The  people  are  all  alike,  in  being  a  horseback 
people,  in  being  a  backwoods  people,  in  being  people 
who  own  land,  in  being  independent  people.  Why,  I 
am  as  much  of  a  curiosity  to  them  as  they  are  to  me. 
I  remember  speaking  in  Jackson  County — one  of  my 
first  speeches.  They  adjourned  court  for  me  to 
make  a  speech  on  education.  It  is  a  county  that  does 
not  contain  a  railroad,  telegraph,  printing-press  or  a 
library  of  fifty  books;  its  county  seat  at  that  time  did 
not  contain  a  church;  but  that  county  put  more  men 
into  the  Union  Army  in  proportion  to  its  people  than 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  463 

any  other  county  in  the  nation  (applause);  and  I 
spoke  to  two  hundred  men  not  one  of  whom  wore  a 
collar.  When  I  had  finished  one  of  the  natives  said, 
"Well,  President,  I  could  understand  right  smart 
what  you  were  telling  us.  Hits  this  away" — the  old 
Saxon  neuter  pronoun,  not  the  Cockney  "h" — "hits 
this  away;  we  had  an  officer  in  our  regiment  from 
New  York  or  somewheres  what  spoke  the  same  dialect 
as  you   do."     (Laughter.) 

Well,  I  bought  a  horse  and  a  pair  of  saddle-bags 
and  started  out  to  invite  these  people  to  come  to 
school;  to  see  how  they  were  living;  to  study  up  the 
additional  adaptations  that  should  be  necessary  for 
them.  Then  I  went  to  Cincinnati  to  begin  to  find 
friends  and  get  some  business  men  of  note  onto  our 
board  of  trustees,  and  develop  to  a  programme  for 
those  three  million  people.  One  of  my  old  pupils  in  a 
northern  institution  is  on  the  Geological  Survey  at 
Washington.  He  kindly  marked  off  for  me  two 
hundred  counties  in  these  eight  States  as  being  the 
mountain  region  of  the  South.  The  last  census  gave 
a  population  of  over  three  million  to  those  two  hun- 
dred counties.  This  population  has  been  increasing 
at  a  rapid  rate.  Their  families  are  as  large  as  the 
laws  of  nature  will  allow  and  this  geometrical  in- 
crease has  brought  the  mountains  to  fullness  so  that 
in  Eastern  Kentucky  I  see  that  their  average  hold- 
ings are  only  200  acres  a  man,  and  when  you  consider 
that  those  are  upright  acres  (laughter)  and  many  of 
them  never  can  see  the  ploughshare,  you  see  they 


464  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

have  about  come  to  the  point  where  they  need  a  little 
instruction  in  agriculture.  They  must  get  more  out 
of  their  land.  They  have  exterminated  the  game, 
their  rifles  hang  empty  on  their  chimney-pieces,  the 
best  of  their  forest  has  been  slaughtered.  They  need 
a  friend.  So  v^e  must  find  a  problem  of  self-help  that 
will  put  those  independent  people  in  step  with  the 
world.  See  how  they  differ  from  the  Western  fron- 
tier. We  have  a  Western  frontier  of  log-cabins  and 
sod-houses  still,  in  some  places,  but  in  those  log- 
cabins  and  sod-houses  you  find  college  graduates; 
you  find  men  from  the  East  who  have  all  the  images 
and  patterns  of  schools  and  institutions  in  their 
mind  and  they  will  be  natural  leaders  and  will  build 
up  according  to  the  pattern  of  what  they  have  seen, 
but  there  is  no  such  leadership  for  the  mountain  men. 
Moreover,  the  Western  frontier  has  social  and  in- 
dustrial ties  with  the  East  so  that  we  naturally  have 
helped  every  Western  State  in  its  educational  foun- 
dations, but  we  have  not  helped  this  great  Southern 
region.  I  suppose  that  a  portion  of  these  people, 
possibly  a  third  of  them,  lie  on  the  margin  of  the 
region  and  they  may  be  reached  by  the  natural  prog- 
ress of  civilization,  but  here  are,  I  know,  two  million 
people,  of  Revolutionary  ancestry,  in  the  main,  the 
purest  American  stock  on  the  Continent,  who  are 
more  destitute  of  all  that  goes  with  education  than 
any  other  English-speaking  people  on  the  globe. 
And  they  are  people  whom  it  will  pay  to  help.  We 
must  have  a  programme  for  them  and  make  them 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  465 

understand  it  and  bring  them  up  to  be  a  reinforce- 
ment to  us  in  the  good  causes  and  the  great  work 
of  the  future  of  the  RepubHc.  Our  first  effort  has 
been  to  estabHsh  the  public  schools.  Now,  all  the 
Southern  States  are  inexperienced  in  the  matter  of 
public  schools.  Kentucky  is  doing  well,  according 
to  its  wealth,  or,  rather  its  poverty.  Kentucky  is  a 
State  with  only  one  city  in  it,  Louisville.  Lexington 
is  a  town  of  less  than  30,000  people  and  no  manu- 
factures except  whiskey.  The  richer  portion  of  the 
State  pays  taxes  to  help  the  poorer  portion.  They 
have  divided  this  mountain  country  into  districts, — 
pretty  large  ones.  They  send  the  money  into  every 
district  for  a  hundred  days  of  school,  but  that  money 
is  administered  by  people  who  never  went  to  school. 
It  is  administered  in  the  way  Budd  Gabbard  handled 
it.  The  teachers  are  incompetent,  the  parents 
haven't  enough  interest  to  send  their  children  to 
school  and  the  whole  school  system  is  in  contempt.  I 
have  spent  my  summers  in  the  work,  and  we  have 
competent  men  and  women  likewise  to  ride  through 
those  mountains,  to  attend  the  teachers'  institutes, 
to  go  out  with  tents  and  wagons  and  stereopticans 
and  hold  public  meetings  to  rouse  up  the  people  to 
the  value  of  their  public  school  system;  and 
plant  here  and  there  and  another  place  a  successful 
school;  the  example  is  contagious,  and  so  we  shall 
leaven  the  lump  and  that  public-school  money  will 
at  last  do  some  good  and  be  a  force  following  in  the 
right   direction   forever.     And    then   we   must    take 


466  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

hold  of  their  industries.  No  man  needs  instruction 
in  agriculture  so  much  as  the  man  with  the  poor 
land.  We  are  supposed  to  be  the  only  scientists  in 
the  world  who  are  making  a  study  of  agriculture;  our 
agricultural  colleges  are  trying  to  make  the  successful 
agriculturists  more  successful.  This  valley  land 
has  been  turned  up  a  hundred  years,  has  been 
cropped  in  corn  ever  since, — no  rotation  of  crops.  In 
those  valleys  the  price  of  corn  has  not  varied  for 
years  and  years.  No  corn  goes  in  or  comes  out,  nor 
can.  Teach  the  men  to  raise  more  stock.  That  is  a 
crop  that  can  walk  to  market.  Then  with  our  great 
army  of  school  teachers  we  can  make  those  ideas 
travel  and  thus  we  shall  reach  thousands  of  people 
who  will  never  reach  Berea  and  if  they  learn  to  pros- 
per from  an  educational  centre,  then  their  prosperity 
will  advance  the  education  of  an  entire  generation.  I 
have  seen  that  programme  working  for  ten  years.  We 
have  a  whole  line  of  counties  where,  if  our  influence 
should  now  be  withdrawn,  I  believe  they  would  never 
go  back.  Now  we  want  to  hasten  on  and  annex 
further  and  further  counties. 

You  will  ask  me  about  the  capacity  of  these  people. 
It  is  hard  to  judge  of  it,  because  one  can  never  depend 
upon  their  having  any  particular  piece  of  information. 
They  will  make  the  most  ridiculous  mistakes.  You 
remember  the  woman  who  came  down  during  the 
Spanish  War  with  great  agitation  to  a  county-seat  in 
Georgia,  I  think,  and  said  she  wondered  the  folks 
were  not  more  torn  up  down  there,  as  they  had  been 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  467 

up  where  she  had  come  from,  because  it  had  been 
given  out  that  "them  Spaniards  had  flying  squad- 
roons,"  and  if  some  of  them  should  Hght  in  their  ter- 
ritory they  were  not  prepared  for  them.  (Laughter.) 
Now,  why  should  a  "flying  squadroon"  be  any  more 
improbable  than  an  electric  car  ?  They  don't  know 
what  to  believe  and  what  not  to.  We  shouldn't,  if 
we  were  in  their  condition.  I  had  a  Massachusetts 
man  in  Berea  teaching,  one  winter  and  spring.  He 
told  me  that  in  higher  arithmetic  and  geometry,  where 
general  information  was  not  called  for,  simply  appli- 
cation of  a  power  of  mind,  these  men  did  as  well  as 
the  favored  sons  and  daughters  of  the  old  Bay  State. 
And  we  see  many  examples  of  their  practical  knowl- 
edge. For  example,  we  disarm  these  fellows  when 
they  come  to  Berea.  We  had  a  good  deal  of  trouble 
a  year  ago  taking  a  revolver  from  a  stalwart  fellow 
from  Letcher  County.  Well,  we  got  his  revolver.  This 
year  he  came  back  to  school,  marched  up  the  first 
thing  and  handed  over  his  revolver  in  a  very  mild 
and  lamb-like  way.  We  discovered  he  had  been 
prudent  enough  to  bring  two  revolvers.  (Laughter.) 
Now  that  kind  of  a  fellow  is  worth  educating.  And 
then  you  will  ask  about  their  responses.  Examples 
are  better  than  anything  else,  and  I  will  give  you 
those  that  are  typical.  I  remember  the  case  of 
Lucinda  Hayes,  a  beautiful,  tall,  black-eyed  girl. 
She  had  walked  in,  fifteen  or  twenty  miles,  bare- 
footed, with  her  shoes  in  a  basket  with  other  belong- 
ings.    She  had  kinsfolk  in  Berea  who  agreed  to  give 


468  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

her  her  board  to  get  into  the  institution.  She  wanted 
four  dollars  and-a-half.  After  getting  acquainted 
with  her,  I  told  her  I  would  lend  her  half  that  money 
and  give  her  the  other  half.  If  I  had  given  her  all  it 
would  have  dulled  her  ambition;  she  would  have  de- 
pended on  me.  If  I  had  lent  her  all  it  would  have 
discouraged  her  because  four  dollars  and-a-half  was 
too  big  a  debt.  I  fixed  it  up  with  her  in  that  way, 
term  after  term.  I  invested  ;^50.oo  finally,  ;^25.oo  in 
gifts  and  a  ;^25.oo  loan,  portions  of  which  she  began 
to  repay  by  bringing  me  farm  produce  from  home. 
Then  she  disappeared.  When  she  came  back  it  was 
a  very  happy  day  for  her  and  surprisingly  happy  for 
me.  She  had  been  to  the  treasurer's  office  and  paid 
her  debt;  she  was  clothed,  for  the  first  time,  with 
underclothing,  overshoes  and  umbrella,  and  she  had 
rented  a  room  and  brought  another  sister  and  they 
were  going  to  be  in  school.  We  will  never  have  to 
help  Lucinda  any  more.  She  stirred  the  ambition 
of  her  district;  she  has  awakened  that  end  of  the 
county.  She  was  a  good  investment.  Only  this 
winter  a  man  died  in  Berea  that  I  thought  a  great 
deal  of,  because  he  was  the  first  moonshiner  that  I 
had  captured.  When  I  was  making  that  first  sum- 
mer's tour,  riding  with  one  of  Sherman's  scouts,  who 
was  kin  to  half  the  county  and  comrade  to  the  other 
half,  I  was  speaking  in  the  schoolhouses  and  they 
began  to  tell  me  of  a  mighty  man  whose  dominions 
we  were  approaching.  He  had  built  his  log  castle 
at  a  point  where  three  counties  met,  so  that  he  could 


/ 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  469 

bring  up  a  point  on  the  jurisdiction  if  he  was  arrested 
(laughter)  and  he  was  regarded  with  great  respect 
by  his  neighbors;  he  had  killed  a  neighbor  and  an 
officer  there  and  had  so  much  lead  in  him  he  daresn't 
go  in  swimming.  (Laughter.)  This  mighty  man  came 
out  to  hear  me  talk  on  education.  He  never  had 
heard  anything  but  a  political  speech  and  a  funeral 
sermon  before.  He  followed  me  up  and  heard  the  same 
speech  again  in  the  afternoon.  The  next  day  I  was 
many  miles  from  there,  but  as  I  came  to  my  school- 
house,  there  was  his  familiar  gray  horse  fastened  to 
the  hanging  limb  of  a  beech  tree.  He  heard  that 
speech  for  the  third  time.  The  result  was  he  packed 
up  and  moved  with  all  his  plunder  to  Berea,  put  five 
children  in  the  school,  the  eldest  being  in  the  peni- 
tentiary at  the  time.  That  family  was  interrupted 
just  in  time.  If  he  had  been  reached  five  years  sooner, 
the  eldest  son  would  not  have  gone  to  the  peniten- 
tiary. And,  by  the  way,  they  say  that  for  the  smart- 
est boys  in  their  mountains,  the  great  chance  to  see 
the  world  and  get  educated  has  been  either  to  go  to 
the  penitentiary  or  to  enlist  in  the  army  and  go  to  the 
Philippines.  That  is  a  short  way  to  get  a  little  ex- 
perience. But  we  are  trying  to  give  them  an  educa- 
tion nearer  home  than  the  penitentiary  or  the  Philip- 
pine Islands.     (Laughter.) 

Now  one  other  thing.  Perhaps  this  is  as  important 
as  anything  I  have  for  you.  See  the  relation  of  this 
population  to  the  whole  Southern  problem.  The 
Southern  problem  is  riot  the  negro  problem  so  much 


470  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

as  the  white  problem.  The  white  people  have  con- 
trol of  every  office  and  all  the  machinery  and  most  of 
the  wealth,  and  the  problem  is  how  considerately 
they  will  treat  the  colored  man  and  how  wisely  they 
will  administer  their  own  affairs.  The  old  educated 
southern  leaders  are  gone — Lamar  and  Hampton 
and  Gov.  Northen — and  those  men  who  had  some 
discipline  of  mind  and  some  knowledge  of  history. 

How  are  you  going  to  deal  with  the  great  unedu- 
cated white  masses  of  the  South  .?  Well,  a  good  place 
to  begin  is  with  these  people  who  are  ready  for  Yankee 
notions,  these  people  who  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  us  in  the  Civil  War.  And  they  are  just  ready 
to  overflow  from  their  mountains.  They  have 
bought  a  row  of  blue-grass  farms  all  along  the  Ken- 
tucky border;  they  are  going  to  spread.  They  have 
the  reddest,  but  not  the  bluest  blood  in  the  South, 
and  I  say  to  you  if  we  can  put  the  Yankee  ideas  of 
progress  into  these  mountain  people,  it  will  affect  for 
good  the  destiny  of  that  great  circle  of  Southern 
States.  It  is  the  most  vital  spot  and  the  most  hope- 
ful spot  to  touch  the  entire  Southern  problem. 

I  am  glad  to  get  acquainted  with  a  Club  that  takes 
such  ar»  interest  in  public  questions  and  entertains  the 
spirit  that  you  do.  Have  you  realized,  gentlemen, 
that  American  patriotism  is  the  biggest  patriotism 
that  ever  was — that  it  has  got  to  be  so  .?  Patriotism, 
like  other  noble  sentiments,  began  with  a  humble 
instinct.  It  was  the  family  and  tribal  instinct,  to 
/^    begin  with.     It  used  to  be  the  hatred  between  we'uns 


OUR  CONTEMPORARY  ANCESTORS  471 

and  you'uns;  then  it  extended  to  take  in  quite  a  lot 
of  tribes  and  it  was  quite  the  thing  for  the  Jew  to 
love  all  the  Twelve  Tribes  of  Israel  and  despise  the 
Gentiles;  then  for  the  Greek  to  love  all  the  States  of 
Greece  and  hate  the  territories.  But  our  patriotism 
has  to  be  wider  and  broader  and  deeper.  It  has  to  be 
continental  American  patriotism,  and  I  am  sure  that 
you  will  agree  with  me.  I  was  discussing  with  rather 
a  benighted  financier  in  a  great  city  not  long  ago. 
He  said  to  me,  "My  interests  are  in  this  city  where  I 
make  my  money."  "Well,"  I  said,  "what  should 
this  city  be  if  we  should  draw  a  blockade  around  it 
and  cut  off  your  advertisements  that  go  off  to  the  far 
parts  of  the  land  and  your  revenues  that  come  in  t 
Ought  not  your  interests  to  be  as  wide  as  your  rev- 
enues.?" And  I  believe  you  will  agree  with  me 
further  that  this  particular  mountain  population  is 
an  appealing  one, — our  kindred,  the  people  that 
helped  us  in  the  Civil  War,  the  people  who  are  going 
to  help  us  in  the  future.  Why,  their  whole  case  is 
in  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  was  a  mountain  man; 
he  belonged  to  those  families  that  had  land  and  didn't 
have  slaves.  The  world  has  wondered  why  he  became 
a  great  American,  born  in  circumstances  about  like 
those  of  the  time  of  Alfred  the  Great  and  living 
through  to  the  electric  age,  and  yet  none  of  the  other 
boys  of  Hardin  County  have  ever  been  heard  of. 
Genius,  we  are  told,  does  not  sprout  alone.  Abra- 
ham Lincoln's  mother  had  six  books.  She  had  a 
Bible  and  Pilgrim's    Progress   for   religion;   she   had 


y 


472  THE  LIBERAL  CLUB 

-^sop's  Fables  and  Robinson  Crusoe  for  literature; 
she  had  a  Life  of  Washington  and  a  History  of  the 
United  States  for  politics.  It  was  a  very  choice 
library.  You  can  trace  the  influence  of  those  six 
books  in  Lincoln's  papers  to  the  last.  He  read  those 
books,  he  learned  them  by  heart,  he  came  to  be  able 
to  talk  like  a  book.  He  wanted  something  else  to 
read  and  he  went  to  the  neighbors.  They  had  noth- 
ing but  the  Bible.  He  canvassed  the  region.  There 
were  no  other  books.  After  months  of  search  he  did 
find  a  magistrate  who  had  a  copy  of  the  State  Statutes. 
That  was  the  only  other  attainable  book  for 
young  Lincoln.  Now,  I  submit  to  you,  gentlemen, 
if  it  had  not  been  for  the  Divine  Providence  that  put 
those  six  books  into  the  Lincoln  house  his  great 
soul  might  have  been  strangled  in  the  birth.  Now 
Lincoln  has  hallowed  the  log-cabin  in  a  fashion  as 
Christ  did  the  manger,  being  born  in  it,  and  I  can 
never  pass  one  of  those  humble  cabins  in  the  moun- 
tains without  thinking  of  the  possible  Lincoln  that 
it  holds  and  strenthening  my  resolution  to  do  what  I 
can  to  put  some  ray  of  hope,  guidance  and  encour- 
agement into  every  mountain  home.     (Applause.) 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE           ' 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL   BE  ASSESSED    FOR   FAILURE  TO    RETURN 
THIS   BOOK   ON    THE   DATE   DUE.    THE   PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY    AND    YO    $1.00     ON     THE    SEVENTH     DAY 
OVERDUE. 

^^:,^  :^0  w^= 

,-»  -.'           -i  '.  j'-V^ 

OOt   ^'■'  ^-"^ 

FEB     5    1948 

1 

•  vy     v^~r  /-r  J 


082645 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  UBRARY 


